We had a great time putting together a few moments from Michael’s proposal to Megan. We love seeing their love in-motion and hope that you will enjoy it too;-)

The Garbe Family is a typical family living life to the fullest as they enjoy their day to day occurrences. Two beautiful girls and two loving parents. All with real dreams that will be best suited together. Their dreams were on course to Italy, instead their visiting Holland.

Lisa is often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability — to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. She says it’s like this…

When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans… the Coliseum, the Sistine Chapel, Gondolas. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting. After several months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland!” “Holland?” you say. “What do you mean, Holland? I signed up for Italy. I’m supposed to… be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.” But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay. The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place full of pestilence, famine, and disease. It’s just a different place. So, you must go out and buy new guidebooks. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met. It’s just a different place. It’s slower paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around. You begin to notice that Holland has windmills. Holland has tulips. And Holland even has Rembrandts. But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy, and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life you will say, “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.” And the pain of that experience will never, ever, ever go away. The loss of that dream is a very significant loss. But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you might never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland.

Trip To Holland
By Emily Perl Kingsley

Leah and Roddy waited patiently for their baby to be a part of their lives. Although their lives were changed the moment she came into it, they embraced their new life with acceptance and optimism. They took on Laiken’s first year with strength, compassion, pride, and a whole lot of LOVE.

It’s always a blessing to see people with a real desire to be parents be given the opportunity to raise and nurture a child, especially a child as precious as Laiken.  Both the parents and child will only benefit from the beautiful relationship that they share. Together they make one special family.  

Here is our first family showography that we created to share the Neff’s united love.  Enjoy!!!

As parents of a child with Down syndrome (Ds) it captivated us to look into familiar eyes, for our Ds Appreciation Portrait Event, doing our best to capture the true beauty of each person for who they are.  After we finished our long but thrilling day, we rushed home to review the photographs.  Warmth filled our hearts to see how amazing these special Gifts truly are.  It allowed us to reflect on how much one extra chromosome has changed our lives, entirely…for the better!  

We have been so privileged to go on this exhilarating roller coaster ride of emotions and self reflections to end-up in a new world almost everyday. What an adventure she has taken us on so far!!! We know that it’s only the beginning and we can’t wait to see how else she will help us evolve in this short life that we live. Only a few are chosen to be a part of this special adventure. We are the LUCKY ones!

We have never seen as much beauty in life and the pureness of a moment until our daughter “rocked our world”.  She has opened our eyes and hearts to a whole new existence that is filled with more joy and love which can never be expressed in words or actions to its fullness. FickleZeal was born because of Lana and all her glory. To be honest my favorite subjects are people with Down syndrome. It’s photographing their incredible beauty and going on the journey of awe and wonder with them. Each shoot is new and each person is unique. More than that each one of them brings out an inner part of me that I didn’t know existed. They awaken a better me!

Andre decided to get some video clips with our point and shoot camera just “cause”. And that just “cause” has turned into this lovely behind the scenes tribute to our day and every lovely person we photographed.

Thank you all for coming out and allowing us to capture your beauty! Photographing you gave us such joy and excitement. You are all dear to us!