My mom has 5 siblings. My grandfather came from a large family as well. So I have more second-cousins than I can count. But truly, the resemblance between my mom’s brothers and her cousin, Lynn (the father of this beautiful family), is uncanny. And it doesn’t end there. My second-cousin, Tony, looks incredibly similar to my cousin, Chris. (Hostetler relatives, back me up on this.) So all in all, what I’m getting at is that even though my extended family is quite large, I kept thinking to myself that I can certainly see the “Hostetler” in them. Which sounds stupid given that it is their last name, but what I meant by that is that…well, never mind. You get it, right?

This shoot was special for two reasons. One being what I’ve already told you–they are my relatives–but reason two is because this was one of the only days when they were all going to be together. Their oldest daughter just got back from living in Jordan (I’ve love to count the countries she has been to and/or lived in. It’s amazing. Her sandals are from India. Shoot, guess I can’t go pick up a pair like ’em.) and their oldest son is moving out of state. It was a very small window of opportunity to capture them together and I gladly shuffled some things around just so we could make it work.

Don’t they look like the Cool Kid’s Club and don’t you want to be a part of it? I do. 

I’m particularly in love with this set. First of all, Kerri and Erica are just gorgeous with their silky skin, big eyes, and identical smiles, but then I added mom into the mix and it’s quite obvious where they got their looks. I told mom to put her arms around them and squeeze them really tight. This was what I got. Love.

I had so much fun hanging out with them and they were troopers in the heat. By the time we were done, we were all wringing sweat from our shirts. But it was worth it. Every minute, it was worth it. Thank you, Lynn & Janice, Erica, Tony, Kerri, and Reggie: capturing your family was a wonderful experience and you all made it so easy. Thank you for being yourselves and for allowing me to capture that.

(To get a larger view of the gallery below, just click on a photo. Use the arrows on either side to scroll through the album.)