Maggie Wendel Photography » personal

swinging

admin — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 14:05:24 +0000

I’m a mom with a camera is my monthly blog post that shows you some of the images I take of my two favorite subjects: my own children. I am so thankful that I get to be the mom of these two amazing little people. In the past, I only shared images of my clients’ children on my blog, but I also take pictures of my own two children. Lots and lots of images. This weekly post allows me to share some of my favorite images of my own children with you to give you a peek into my world.

Maggie Wendel Photography photographs newborns, babies, and children in a natural, honest, fresh, expressive way. I serve the Wake Forest, Raleigh, and surrounding areas, and my Wake Forest, NC location specializes in custom portrait photography. Contact me at 919-368-7674 or maggie@maggiewendel.com.

Five Facts about Maggie

admin — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 16:09:03 +0000

Five Interesting Little-Known Facts about Maggie

I went skydiving attached to the man who held the Guinness Book of World Records for the most jumps ever made.
I can count to ten in five different languages. I speak a second language conversationally, and I speak a third language enough to get by if the people I bump into don’t speak English.
I am a certified Scuba diver.
I have been to at least 13 different countries.
I have completed (completed, not run…big difference) one full marathon and five half marathons.

running

admin — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 14:13:52 +0000

smiling

admin — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 14:40:24 +0000

The Great Cupcake Incident of 2012

admin — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 17:39:43 +0000

This sad story starts with my five-year-old daughter’s book fair. Mckenna’s school hosted a book fair, and my husband and I took her to the fair to pick out books. At the book fair, she sweetly asked me if I would buy her a princess cupcake recipe book. The book has different recipes for fun princess-like cupcakes, and–because she asked so nicely–I bought her the recipe book.

Mistake number one.

For the entire week after we bought the book, Mckenna nagged me to make cupcakes from it. But each of the recipes require 542 ingredients and an insane amount of time. Time that I just didn’t have at the moment. Fast forward to last week. My little girl was required to stay home from school for two days because she had strep throat. For some reason, she spent her time home lying on the couch wearing a robe, flipping through the princess cupcake recipe book. At one point, she pointed to a recipe and asked, “Mommy, can we please make these?” Feeling sad for her because she was so sick, I agreed.

Mistake number two.

The recipe that she selected requires you to make cupcakes. From scratch. Who does that anymore? Hasn’t the recipe book author heard of Betty Crocker? Obviously not, because the recipe requires 542 ingredients, 6 different mixing bowls, and 7.5 cups of sugar. Yes. You read that correctly. SEVEN. POINT. FIVE. I began to regret my promise. But she was insistent, and I’m still trying to win back points for some of the bad mom decisions I’ve made this year, so out came the 542 ingredients, 6 mixing bowls, and 7.5 cups of sugar. Making the cupcakes took the better part of the evening, and halfway through the endeavor my daughter bailed on me. She left me in the kitchen, covered head to toe in powdered sugar, desperately trying to wipe the Crisco shortening and butter off of my fingers. When the cupcakes were finally out of the oven and the frosting was successfully dyed pink, I called it a night and left the cupcakes on the counter.

Mistake number three.

Fast forward to this morning. I walked back into the kitchen after dropping my children off at school. Of the 24 cupcakes that I made, only four were left standing. One (or both) of our dogs had jumped onto the kitchen counter and devoured 20 of the two dozen handmade-from-scratch cupcakes that involved 542 ingredients, 6 different mixing bowls, and 7.5 cups of sugar.

Just another day in the Wendel house…

staring

admin — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 14:00:19 +0000

relaxing

admin — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 13:00:00 +0000

first friends…then and now

admin — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 17:57:04 +0000

My daughter has been friends with two little girls nearly their entire lives. In fact, all of our families have become very close over the past five years. You can only imagine how incredibly sad I was to hear that one of the little girls will be moving to Louisiana this month.

This weekend, I went through all of my hard drives to find pictures of the girls together. Looking through all of the pictures helped me relive all of those memories that I captured, and I was incredibly thankful to have taken so many snapshots over the years.

Be sure to slow down and capture those little moments in your children’s lives…

Laughing

admin — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 14:14:49 +0000

Never forget.

admin — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 17:25:00 +0000

On September 11, 2001, I headed to my office in Roseland, NJ, just like any other weekday. I remember driving into work that morning, toward New York City. It was a beautiful day in the New York Metro area. The sky was clear, crisp, and blue. I was listening to 95.5 WPLJ, and I could tell from the discussion that there was confusion in New York, but I didn’t truly understand what was going on. The first reports I heard was that there was an accident.

A plane “accidentally” hit a building in New York.

I pulled into the parking lot of my office, and I could see smoke in the horizon, in the direction of New York. “That’s a lot of smoke for an accident,” I thought. In the few minutes it took me to get to my desk, the news reports were becoming more solid. It wasn’t just one plane that hit a building. Terrorists had flown two airplanes into the Twin Towers. Even then, we didn’t realize what was truly happening. People in my office wheeled a television into a large atrium, so we could watch the story unfold.

And we watched–with horror–as one tower fell.
And then the other.

I went back up to my desk, not being able to believe my eyes. I sat at my desk numbly when my sister-in-law called me. She started crying as she told me that the pentagon was on fire.

We were being attacked.

I don’t remember much after that. Our company sent us home, because no one knew truly knew what was going on. No one had any idea what the magnitude of the situation would be. I drove home, away from the city, and I could see the smoke from the towers rising up in the air in my rear view mirror.

For the next few weeks, life in the New York metro area was full of saddness and grief. We tried to go about our lives, but there was no way to ignore what had happened. Driving around those next few weeks was powerful. Flags flew from every overpass. People had flags flying from their homes, and from their cars. We were bonded together by the grief. We were proud. We were Americans.

We chanted the mantra, “Never forget.”

And I haven’t forgotten. Just last week, I stood in Raleigh-Durham International airport in front of a memorial: a large American flag printed with the names of every victim of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. One of the names on the flag is George Bishop, my uncle. He was on the 101st floor of the towers that day. But before that, he was my uncle. A man who taught me to love Hagan Daz ice cream and have a soft spot for VW Beetles. I looked at his name on the flag, and stood with my head bowed for a brief moment of silence in his honor…and in the honor of all of the other victims from that day.

In early May, my husband called me from San Francisco. His flight had just landed and there was chatter about an important news conference at the White House. I was about to go to bed, and I thought Aaron was confused because it was after 10:00 pm. On a Sunday. Aaron told me to turn on the TV because this was big. “A matter of national security.”

My first thought was, “oh God. We’re under attack again.”

In fact, my heart sunk. As soon as I turned on the news, I realized it couldn’t be anything like burning buildings because for the first ten minutes, there were no reports about the actual announcement. I was sitting on the couch trying to imagine what it could possibly be.

What could be so important that the President would address the nation that late at night?

When the reporter broke the news, I literally jolted with shock.

That night on television, the reporters showed crowds converging in front of the White House and spontaneously erupting into our national anthem. And as they sang the words, “the land of the free, and the home of the brave,” I got goose bumps and said a prayer for the men and women who sacrifice so much to keep our country safe.

To ensure that attacks like 9/11 do not happen again.

So today, ten years later, I say a prayer for the victims of the attacks. I think of their families. I think of the survivors. And I especially think of the heroes who rose to service and ran into those burning buildings as everyone else was running away. Today, I will buy Hagan Daz ice cream and eat it in honor of George Bishop’s memory…because I have not forgotten.