Lauren contacted me back in October to schedule her anniversary session with her husband, Kenny. It is her goal to get their photos done at each duty station so they can document the journey the Marine Corps takes them on. I love this idea and plan to do the same! Our maternity photos were done in downtown Wilmington right before we left Lejeune, but we still need to get the iconic DC session in, which is exactly what we were trying to do for Lauren and Kenny.

Kenny is an active duty Marine currently attending a year-long course at Quantico. This sounds like it should be a very scheduled and predictable assignment…but, unfortunately, it is not. Between Kenny’s work schedule and Lauren’s nursing schedule (she works nights…holy moly, she’s my hero!) and my wedding schedule, we were struggling to find a time to make their session happen!

Finally, we settled a SPRING date so that we could really embody their short time in Quantico at the cherry blossoms at the Tidal Basin in DC. Our patience in scheduling and finding the perfect time for everyone did not work due to the crazy, once-in-many-lifetimes PANDEMIC that occurred! Although our ideal plans weren’t able to happen, Lauren and Kenny were so easy-going and didn’t hesitate when I asked them to meet me in a Walgreens parking lot because one of my friends told me there was a group of cherry blossom trees there.

So sunrise on a Tuesday, we ventured out and made some magic happen in a Walgreens parking lot with a major intersection behind us. It was between shifts for Lauren and between classes for Kenny, but we did what we had to in order to document their time in Quantico! And they knocked it out of the park!!

We are still going to try and work their monument session in before they make their next Marine Corps move to North Carolina. While we are keeping our fingers crossed, we are also thankful the Marine Corps is such a tight-knit community and that they are able to come back some time in the future to finish their Quantico/DC dream session! For now, though, Walgreens will do. 🙂