Casey and Kristi

Isn’t she a doll?

Ciana Jean Valiant:
Born January 14, 2010
7 lbs 12 oz
21″ long
A full head of hair!
Super sweet and adorable!

Click here to view this photo book larger

We own a super sweet camera, so we had Jeremy and Tama over to take pregnancy shots of us at 37 weeks pregnant. We turned our kitchen into a photo studio, and Casey got the camera all set up (I really need to read the book that we bought about our camera to figure out how to do ISO settings, white balance, and the like).

Here are some of my favorite shots. We took hundreds, and I’ll post a link to our Shutterfly photo book after I get that designed.

Yes, the iPhone photos were Casey’s idea. I think we need to sell them to Apple.

I hope you’ll be a bit patient with us as we transition to a Wordpress powered blog. This will make it easier to share more with you.

Check back soon! In the meantime, here’s our most commonly viewed pages from our old site (some of the links may not work):
Our Engagement
Photos

Smiley Pumpkin

We had a productive Halloween getting things done around the house. Took a break tonight to hang with friends and to carve a pumpkin. I like how this smiley monster turned out.

Casey and I took a 30-hours-of-driving-in-less-than-a-week roadtrip to Ohio, New York, and Pennsylvania at the beginning of October. Beautiful time for driving and being 6 months pregnant was fine for a roadtrip. Baby Valiant did great!

iPhones are really cool too! We were listening to an audio book and were so engrossed in it that we missed our exit by 15 miles. So we fired up our iPhones and took backroads to get to our destination.

Fall Trees

Got any food (Aflac)?

Fall trees reflected in the water

Highlights throws an incredible Illustrator’s Party Weekend every year. They invited us out to their beautiful headquarters in eastern Pennsylvania and wined and dined us (well, I didn’t get any wine because of the baby). They had activities all weekend long including a bbq, square dance, lamb roast, hayride, pumpkin painting, portfolio time, and so on. Super fun to meet so many wonderful illustrators and their families, and especially the art director that I work with from Highlights.

Sharon Vargo and Lost Sock Day

Brad Harris as Emmett Kelly

One of the activities was a costume party where we were supposed to dress up as our favorite day of the year. I chose World Tourism Day and piled on stuff from all over the world. Casey chose National Kick Butt Day and wore his taekwondo uniform with a butt-shaped sign pinned to his butt that said, "Kick here!" Only one guy attempted to kick him. Sharon Vargo here is Lost Sock Day, and Brad Harris made a perfectly sad Emmet Kelly Clown Day.

Near Highlights and Boyds Mills offices. We took the back roads thanks to our handy iPhones.

This is the lake next to our cabin at the Highlights weekend. Gorgeous!
We took a paddle boat out for a bit and got our butts wet due to a broken rudder.

One of our stops along the roadtrip – somewhere in southern New York state.

On our way to the Highights weekend we stopped and saw friends. It was so fun to get to see Alyn’s new little blessing, baby Elsie, and to help Alyn and Matthew unpack at their new house – they live in the US now – yay!!!

At some falls near Alyn’s house in western New York.

We also saw Katrina and her fam on our roadtrip. I love the whole talking in person thing. Wished we lived closer.

Mom and Dad came to visit and brought us a whole bunch of my baby clothes from when I was little as well as some new clothes. Katrina had also given me a couple bags of baby girl clothes, so Mom and I sorted everything, lined the drawers in our new baby dresser, and got some of the baby stuff from around the house put away. Casey and I also took Mom and Dad to the Fall Festival, a crazy food fest. Should’ve gotten some pics there, but didn’t.

Showing my baby belly at the Midsouth SCBWI conference in Nashville in Sept.

I won the Illustration Contest at the children’s book writers and illustrators conference in Nashville – yay! Here’s my entry. The art director had given us a couple picture book manuscripts, and we had to choose one spread to illustrate using the text he provided.

Labor Day weekend is a great time to blow bubbles and see family.

Drew is pile of laughs – even snapping beans is funny.