Happy Mother's Day

Oh boy am I happy I finally get to post about this! I had been planning what I feel was the best Mother's Day surprise for my mom. You see, last time we visited her I realized she had some really old photos of the family up. I know you want to have the memories, but I figured she could do with some updated ones (plus I got a few family members some frames so I thought it would be good to get new photos for that). Around Christmas time last year I talked all my siblings into getting some pictures done (it was actually easier than I thought, all were on board with it from the start). Oh and the other part, I wanted to keep it a secret so we could surprise them, this had to be kept under lock and key for a while! So we made a plan that I would book the photographer and get everything set up and they'd just have to show up and smile haha.

That was the easy part. Larry and I spent many weekends driving all up and down Provo Canyon and around the Provo and Orem areas trying to find the perfect location. Unfortunately, even though we didn't have much snow for Winter, we still had dead everything from the cold so a lot of the locations were useless (I was okay with greenery in the background, but not death). After I had it narrowed down to a few places we then had to get a good date and time for everyone with all the different schedules. After a few back and forth messages we were finally able to meet up the weekend after Easter and headed down to The Shops At Riverwoods in Provo (it was the perfect in between place and had a ton of different styles for photos).

I will say it was really hard to keep this from my mom. One weekend I kind of slipped up and told her we had been driving around Orem (we're NEVER in that area). When she asked why we were there I had to make up some story about Larry's shopping spree he gifted me with. In the end it was worth it, because she loved her gift!

I ended up ordering the above collage on a plasterboard like material frame for them from Shutterfly (BEST photo gift site ever!). We also printed off some photos and sent her a disc with the images. She said she loved that we all got together and did this for them. And it worked double because I'm pretty sure my step-dad was happy with the gift as well (bonus points for the kids!). Thanks to our photographer Aubrie (check out her blog here) for making this an awesome gift for my parents!

Here are some of my favorite shots: