I was so excited to get to photograph the Duerksen kids two days in a row! (I got to photograph them the day before with their dad and stepmom!) As I told Jenny, I so highly admire the co-parenting philosophy that her and Patrick and Vanessa have taken on. It’s such a beautiful thing to witness parents working so well together and truly, genuinely loving each other and getting along! I’ll never forget something Vanessa told me once: “We just decided that we would never, ever speak badly about anyone else.” And while that seems so simple, relationships are hard and sharing is hard and life is hard. So, to be able to make that decision and stick to it is something that is truly admirable. I have so much respect for this whole family and how they work.

This session was easy because, hey, grown kids can listen to directions so well! But we did run into misting rain and it was getting really cold! They were so flexible and were able to come a little early to avoid most of the rain.

At the end of the session, I asked Jenny if she had any requests that we hadn’t already gotten. She pulled up a photo of when the kids were little where they had a photo taken of the bottoms of their feet and she wondered if we could do something similar now that they are so much older. Wish granted, although the kids were a riot with this one because they were like, “It’s so cold! We’re not taking our shoes off!” And we said, it’s your mother’s one request and it’ll take less than 30 seconds!