Keeping on the 2017 session train, meet the Armas family. This session is important to me to share, because this family has been with me since the VERY beginning.

When I was a just a girl with a camera, working on her side hustle, Veronica hired me to capture her oldest kids Cynthia and Raul’s first communion.

At that point in time, Daniel and I had just met. We weren’t even dating, so no experience with anything to do with the Catholic faith. So take that and add in that I speak very little Spanish and not well — you should now know that this First Communion was at an all Spanish Catholic Church.

Veronica and my mom work together, they’re both postpartum RN’s at St. Francis Hospital in Tulsa, so I knew and had met Veronica, but that was all I had leading up to this session.

Thankfully for me, the Armas’ are incredibly kind people and never once made me feel like a fish out of water as I tried incredibly hard to follow along with a ceremony in a language I don’t speak. They made sure I made it to all the right spots in the church, and got a spot in the garden beside the church cleared after mass to get photos of the kids alone.

Someday I will dig up those images so we can all look at a then and now, but that day isn’t today. 😉

Fast forward five, almost six years later, the little kids I photographed are in high school and Veronica and Victor have added two more boys to their family—they asked if they could get on my schedule next time I came to Oklahoma for photos. And I wasn’t just happy to, I was thrilled.

Side note, Veronica walked through this park in those heels and never once stumbled. Two years later I am STILL in awe of her skill.