real life with the moffetts
Once a month, a group of moms in my Dallas neighborhood rotate houses, drink wine, and talk. Sarahbeth offered to host one night, so it was my first time walking into her home.
She's a mom of five. Does the whole crunchy-granola thing. And her house? It looked exactly like what it should look like when you're doing all of that. There may have been a pile of laundry in the corner. The backyard was lived-in. Nothing was staged or precious or for show. You could just feel it, this was a home built to raise children, not to impress anyone.
I'd just learned the word "trad wife" around that time, and I kept seeing it everywhere on social media. The aesthetic of the perfect stay-at-home mom who somehow bakes her own bread, keeps her kids off screens, and still has a spotless kitchen. And something about it just... didn't add up for me. It felt performed.
Sarah Beth's home was the opposite of that. And I was so inspired by it that I asked her right then if I could come over one afternoon and just shoot her family. No plan. No matching outfits. No cleaning up first. Just, let me walk through your door with my camera and see what happens.
The photo session was an hour. The kids were in the backyard, swinging, playing, completely unbothered by my camera. No one hit me with a cheesy smile. No one performed. I got to play around with my shutter speed to catch the motion of the swing, that blur-of-childhood kind of image that I love, and just move through the space and shoot what was actually there.
At the end, Sarah Beth came outside and just... started playing with the kids. Swinging them. Being present with them. I never even asked her to. She just did it.
Afterward she said, "That was so easy." And then she said something that stuck with me. She said the session gave her a chance to actually stop and play with her kids. No to-do list running in the background. No distractions. Just an hour of pure connection.
That's it. That's what a family session is.
You don't need a plan. You don't need a clean house. You don't need coordinating outfits or a Pinterest-worthy location. What you get — what you're really booking — is one full hour with your kids. No chores, no emails, no scrolling. Just you, showing up and being with them. And someone there to catch it.
Some of my favorite images I've ever taken came from that afternoon in Sarah Beth's backyard. Because I had total creative freedom, and her family gave me total realness. That combination doesn't happen every session, but when it does, it's everything.
