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ATLANTA — With the help of a gifted photographer, a Texas woman surprised her husband with a touching Christmas gift that honored the three children they'd lost.
After tragically losing all three of their children at birth, Tony and Laura McBride never thought their family portrait would include more than just the two of them, according to ABC News.
"Christopher would be 22, Tyler would be almost 18 and Kieran Shane would be just over 1 year old," Laura McBride told ABC.
But then McBride heard about Georgia-based photographer Brandi Angel, who gave one of her brides a special wedding gift. The woman's son had passed away from cancer before her wedding, so Angel found a way to Photoshop the little boy into his mother's wedding album.
That's when McBride realized she might actually get that portrait she so longed for.
"I saw it and thought, 'Oh my goodness,'" McBride told ABC. "I knew Brandy was in Georgia and I didn't know how that would work but something compelled me to call."
As luck would have it, Angel was traveling to Texas over the Thanksgiving holiday — staying just an hour away from the McBrides' home. The pair made arrangements to shoot the couple's extended family so the real purpose of the photo shoot could be a Christmas surprise for McBride's husband.
Angel took some shots of the couple alone on a bridge and then worked with a Web designer to edit in the shadows of three young children standing at their sides. When Laura McBride presented the portrait to her husband on Christmas morning, he was moved to tears.
"He was very surprised and very moved and said it was his favorite gift ever," she told ABC. "What a great memory and comfort it is."
