End of 2013 + 4 Years of Marriage!

Well the end of 2013 rocked the Maners household! I spent more time working than I care to admit (both NCSU & freelance) and then add in Christmas production at church (I was the lighting designer you can check out the full thing online at http://yourfavoritechristmas.com), traveling to my parents’ for Christmas, then to Florida for a wedding, and stopping in Savannah to see the e’Silvas; needless to say we spent very little time at home. Ryker has been an extreme trooper through it all, including the 1200+ miles in a car seat!

As with any infant, we had to take lots of photos over the holidays including some adorable ones of Ryker in front of Mimi Maners’ Christmas tree. Thanks to my buddy Brian C. for letting me borrow a remote flash and shoot through umbrella setup. You can see them all at http://photos.themanersfamily.com/Ryker/Christmas-2013. The photos came out way better than I could have imagined so I hope you enjoy!

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Believe it or not, today marks 4 years of marriage for LaBranda and I. We’ve shared a lot of excitement as well as a lot of challenges over these few short years. Thanks to all of our friends and family who support, encourage, and share this crazy thing called life with us. We are forever grateful to God for seeing fit to bring us together and we can’t wait to see what He has in store for us!

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Ryker 3 Month Update

Wow! Where has the time gone? It seems like just a few days ago when I posted a few updates on Ryker at 7 weeks and now he is 3 months old! A lot has changed in the last several weeks as Ryker continues to grow and develop. We are starting to see his personality come out, he’s smiling more and more, and constantly bringing joy to his Mom and Dad’s hearts. We hope you enjoy some of the photos below from the past few weeks! Feel free to check out more over on our SmugMug site.

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Ryker 7 Week Update

Ryker continues to grow leaps and bounds. We’ll have his 2 month check-up in just over two weeks from now. I’ll be really interested to hear how much weight he’s gained! He’s gotten on a relatively good schedule, eating about every 3 hours except at night where he’ll go about 6 – 7 hours between feeding. In the next week or so, we’ll be trying to get rid of that middle of the night feeding. I know LaBranda will be a whole lot more grateful about that, as she’s usually the one that gets up to feed him at 4am! Hope you enjoy a few recent photos!

Ryker Newborn Photos

In case you missed our Twitter and Facebook posts, LaBranda and I welcomed our beautiful baby boy, Ryker, into the world on May 30th. It was a long labor process with many ups and downs but in the end we have a very healthy baby boy. A week after his birth, the ever talented Rebecca Mill of The Indie Image (you should really check our her new site – it is pretty awesome) came to our house to photograph some amazing shots.

I’ve shared some of our favorites below. If you want to look at some more, check out the full Ryker’s First Photo Shoot gallery.