I swear Lynnen is a natural born performer. She cracks me up anytime I am near her and she totally gives me my “fix” for wanting a little girl! She and Ellasyn are all the ruffles, bows and giggles I can ever imagine! Ellasyn isn’t as much of a performer as her big sis, though. She is pretty mellow and content to just hang out and smile for me. Together– they are just the greatest pair and make the studio so much fun!
Olyn and I absolutely hate it when we both can’t be at a portrait session. When the other one sees the images, they of course have a million ideas they would have tried. Its our version of “armchair quaterbacking”. This time, all I could really tell Olyn was that I was bummed I missed all the fun! He did such a great job with Kelle and Josh and I could tell they had a really good time!
Thanks to everyone for their patience as we verified the Favorite Family Contest results! I wanted to be super careful, as only 20 votes separated the first and second place families! We received a tremendous amount of votes and making sure each one counted only once per day and that they were all valid addresses took a little bit. 🙂
CONGRATULATIONS TO THE MILLENDER FAMILY FOR BEING TALLAHASSEE”S FAVORITE FAMILY! They will be receiving a family portrait session and a framed 16×20 print! Because it was such a close count, we are also giving the second place family, the Sims, a complimentary family portrait session!! All sessions must be completed no later than October 25th. Additional fees may apply for travel outside the Tallahassee area or for after-hours appointment times.
Congratulations to our first and second place families and thank you to all the families who participated and everyone who voted! Be sure to join the Long’s Photography Facebook page to hear about all our contests and giveaways!
Many of you are on my Facebook page so you have gotten updates all along the way, but for those of you who aren’t on Facebook… here is what has been going on. My dad had to have a valve in his heart replaced last Thursday. Because of his history we had to go to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore for the procedure. His operation was last Thursday morning and everything has gone amazingly well. It will still probably be another week before he and my mom come back to Tallahassee, but we are already seeing a lot of improvements in dad’s health.
I had always known that my dad had been born with a heart problem and had surgery when he was a baby, but until this trip I never truly understood how revolutionary it all was and how hard my grandparents fought for him. When he was born he was called a “blue baby”. His heart had a hole in it between the chambers that did not allow the oxygenated blood to circulate well enough. This type of heart defect caused the babies to have a blue color, like when you hold your breath WAY too long. For babies born in 1942, this meant they would certainly die before the age of 10, many before the age of three.
At Johns Hopkins, the head of pediatrics, Dr. Taussig, went to Dr. Blalock and his lab assistant Vivien Thomas to encourage them to find a way to save these babies. At this point, no surgeon had ever performed open heart surgery. They created a procedure which takes a vein from the leg and bypasses the problem in the heart. After Vivien Thomas perfected the operation on dogs they had enough confidence to operate on a person. In November 1944, they performed the first open heart surgery on a little girl who had the same condition my dad did. When my grandmother heard the news she got on the phone until she was able to speak with Dr. Taussig and convince her that my dad needed this surgery.
In 1945, my grandparents took my three year old father to Johns Hopkins and he became the 13th person in the world to have open heart surgery. The surgeries that they performed at Johns Hopkins on babies like my dad was the beginning of all cardiac surgery. From what we can find out, of those first babies, my dad is the last surviving. He has now had a total of four heart surgeries, with three of them being at Johns Hopkins. I am so thankful for the amazing surgeons and visionaries at JHH and also for my stubborn, never yielding Italian grandmother for fighting for her son. I knew much of this story before my trip, but seeing the amazement of the residents, the head of cardiac surgery, etc. it really hit me how special it all was. 🙂
I have been really trying to “practice what I preach” this year and keep my boys in front of the camera as much as I can. Sounds silly, I know, but photographing your OWN kids is so hard! I feel like I can photograph almost any kid out there… except mine! None of my tricks work with them! This is actually the first New Year’s resolution I have stuck with though, so here is the latest of what I think are the two most awesome, adorable, amazing boys in the universe!
