May 365 Recap

I kinda slacked this month and only got 24 days out of 31. I thought about cheating but figured I would just get back going a do better this month. I am still loving this project and feel it has done wonders for me and my photography but most of all I love that I have documented our lives as they are right now. I think part of the reason I really slacked this month had to do with the fact that I thought every picture had to be perfect. I know now it's not about perfect pictures it's about capturing our lives. I need to find that moment in everyday that is what I want to remember, even if it's 12 loads of laundry. There will come a time when I will only have 2 people to do laundry for (unless they get that disposable cloths thing figured out *fingers crossed*) and even though I won't miss the endless folding of socks it is what my life consists of right now and that's what needs to be captured.

Flash Weekend

Words cannot express how much fun I had this weekend aside form the crappy wind, with my fellow photog friends and Miss Wendy Schulz my teacher and mentor! I learned so much and laughed even more. Flash off and on camera is really hard for me. REALLY HARD!! Well when you are going for drama and high contrast it's not that hard but to get consistent natural looking beautiful light from an external source is tricky and there are so many factors involved. Obviously because i was learning a new skill i wasn't really paying attention to my other skills pertaining to photography but I wanted to put these pictures up so I can remember the good times had on our flash weekend.

I would like firstly to introduce you to the amazing Wendy. For all of you that have sent me emails asking if i took classes, I took an advanced class online with Wendy and I also did a 2 month mentorship with her last summer. She is such a wealth of knowledge. She reads something once somewhere and it sticks like super glue. Oh how I wish I had this skill. If you are interested at any level to improve your photography I would highly recommend taking a class with Wendy. More info on her here.
Not to mention she has the bad-A photog stance down!



There were 4 other girls who came and stayed at my house for the duration of the weekend workshop. Jenny whom you may remember from my WPPI posts form California. Lesli who traveled all the way from across town in Henderson, She even camped with us because it really is a long drive!! Kelly who came from Colorado and Kari who came down form Elko(who still need to give me her blog address.) These women were so fun and some of them were even up for a bit of toilet papering Heather, another Wendy Alumni that lives here but had already taken the flash class so she only made it to dinner with us on Friday.
It's really cool to be able to take pictures with a flash and not really be able to tell that any artificial light was used. Numbers 5, 7, 8 & 9 are natural light the rest are on and off camera flash. Now I just need to get out an practice, practice practice! The wind as I said before was horrific and so we had a bit of a hard time keeping the equipment from blowing over but we got some cool shots!




Well if you couldn't tell by my excessive blabbering about how much fun we had I'll say it again I had so much fun and got way too little sleep, that seems to happen when I'm hanging out with Jenny, she's so fun!!I think I'll blame her!

We've had a Birthday shout Hooray!

Colby celebrated his 6th Birthday on Wednesday last week. We started off by opening presents.

Colby had a few phone calls from Grandparents and checked out his new Nerf gun.
Colby requested cupcakes with batman on them, i couldn't figure out how to put batman on them so I just used chocolate bark and made batman symbols to place on top of the cupcakes. I forgot to get a shot of them before the kids in Colby's class devoured them.



We spent the last 30mins in class with the birthday boy. Bonnie ate a crayon, stole a sea shell and ripped papers off the wall. It reminded me why I don't go to help out in school classes!




Colby was excited to go to piano on his birthday and he even got an extra 250 points to make it so he could pick what ever he wanted out of the treasure box, he choose a bubble gum egg laying chicken, goofy boy!



Brett had a band concert so we hit Red Robin for an early dinner, milkshakes all around topped off with an ice cream sundae! YUM!!!!

Colby is the sweetest 5 year old there has ever been and makes my job so easy. He is a snuggley sweet smart funny and amazing boy. we are so blessed to have him in our family!

Official cause of death...Brain overload

I just completed 2 SOLID days of learning to work with artificial light in photography. I am a bit overwhelmed by all I learned and hope to retain it all. I have been so busy in the week and a half leading up to this weekend and has led me to be out of contact. I will be returning e-mails and phone calls this week as well as trying to update my blog. I have so much to write about and 2 weeks to go without blogging is causing me to have withdrawals.





I wish I could take credit for this picture but it was an imitation of a photo done by my amazing photography teacher Wendy Schulz. Her photo can be found here.

10 on Tuesday Interwebs Style

1. There have been some really cool stuff out there on the interwebs lately so I thought I would share some of it with you here.

2. I posted this on Facebook and it has been everywhere but if you have been living under a rock for the past week I will post it because EVERYONE needs to see it! I have been following Nie Nie since before her accident and she was an inspiration to me long before she had her accident and now she is even more inspiring!

3. I am second shooting another wedding for an amazing photographer from Arizona. Her name is Melissa Jill and she does some beautiful work, If you need a wedding photographer, you should definitely give her a call. I am super excited to shoot alongside her! You can see her website here.

4. These are my status updates from facebook for the last week...

Sunday-
Delicious breakfast, Delicious dinner, a house full of busy bees cleaning up the mess and hopefully I will smell chocolate wafting my way soon! What a wonderful Mother's Day thanks to my baby daddy! ♥ You babe!
Saturday-
Bonnie age 2 asked her daddy if she can "go wis you daddy?" when she is told no she runs to mommy and says " I go wis you mommy, daddy said yes" SHE'S 2! I'm scared for when she' 15!
Friday -
Luv-It makes me a happy girl!
Thurdsay-
2 newborns in 2 day, I'm pooped!
Wednesday-
so..........much...........to...........clean.............must............get..............off.............facebook!

5. This is Terry's activity on Facebook for the last month...

Me and the kids were making a treat for mothers day. Bonnie runs up stairs to Kristin and whispers, "mom, we're having chocolate cake. You have to be quiet. Shh."

He may not post all that often but when he does it's a doosey!

6. Look what I learned to do today



Just roll your mouse over the picture to see what it does! Cool huh, you think, oh lookie there a cute little Bonnie and then BAM! she stickin her tongue out at you!! She's still cute though!

7. I learned that neato trick over on The Pioneer Woman's blog here.

8. I started a Facebook page for my photography, you can show you like me HERE! What? I posted that as my #9 on last weeks 10 on tuesday, well I guess I'm not averse to shameless self promotion. Please come like me!! It will make me so very happy!!

9. I want and iPad still, really bad so I can download this app. Then I can read laying down without the pesky page turning problem! And I can play scrabble too!

10. For parents with kids in the Clark County School District, if you haven't discovered Parentlink yet, ask your kids teacher, you can keep up to date with your kids grades instead of being surprised when progress repot cards come home!

That wraps up my 10 on Tuesday Interwebs version, have a good night and get off the computer and go snuggle something that breathes!! kthanksbye!

Baby Fever

I had the pleasure of photographing 2 of the sweetest boys last week. It was a good little fix for my newborn obsession. Have I ever told you how much I love newborns? Well, I LOVE NEWBORNS. I would have a baby every year if the little buggers didn't grow up into kids. Don't get me wrong, I like kids but the is something so special about these little special spirits that were in heaven such a short time ago. First off was sweet little Brayden. He was only 9 days old and super fun to photograph.







Next up was Jackson who was 2 weeks old and so sleepy. He also had the most amazingly long lashes. I have never seen such lashes on a baby. He was super cooperative as well, I could have kept him if his momma would have let me!







I think I have a new fould love in photographing newborns. Not to mention it's 2 birds with one stone, I get to take pictures and feed the newborn loving beast that resides in my uterus!

Mothers Day

(me and my punks, Colby 6 in 2 weeks, Sam 10. Bonnie 2, and Brett 12)


I've never been a huge fan of Mother's Day in the past 8 or so years. You may ask why on earth would I not like a day to celebrate my calling in life, the most important thing I will ever do. Well the issues I have stem partly because of the pressures and expectations I have on myself that are indefinitely thrust in my face on this day. As I sit in Sacrament meeting it never fails that some man or woman stands at the pulpit and speaks of amazing mothers everywhere and then the guilt ensues. I am not the mother I wish to be. Though I try hard everyday almost everyday when the night falls and all my kids are in bed and I have a minute to reflect on my day I feel that excruciating guilt about the kind of mother I was that day. All of that is compounded on Mother's Day. A day set aside for honoring these great women, a group of women that I feel only a part of most of the time because I gave birth 4 times, not because I am what I would describe as a great mother. Now I will most definitely get comments telling me that I am being to hard on myself and that I am a good mother but the lord gave us the ability to feel guilt so that we may grow and improve. I just wish that my guilt was not for this. I want my kids to grow up knowing that they had the best mom in the world. I want my kids to say like my husband did yesterday "I think I'll put my 'mom is better than your mom' as my facebook status...no I better not because it's not funny when it's true and it will just make people feel bad!" I think that was one of the nicest things a son could say about his mother and where did my mind go when he said those things...Yep "his mom is way better of a mother that I could ever hope to be." Now while I did have a wonderful day in the sense that my kids got along and were cooperative for the most part, my husband took care of most everything that is my usual responsibility and even topped of the day with a chocolate cake I went to bed feeling like garbage because I know that I am not fulfilling the duties given to a mother. I need to go back to my word of the year that I have been neglecting and work on finding more JOY. I will do better so that next year when Mothers day comes I can say yeah, I did my best and am proud of the mother I am and hope my kids are too!

On a side note I hope you all had a wonderful mothers day surrounded by the people you love!

10 on Tuesday

1. WHAT? IT'S BEEN TWO WEEKS SINCE YOU HAVE READ MY RAMBLINGS IN A 10 ON TUESDAY POST? I am so sorry let me remedy that for ya!!

2. I have been really busy with nothing lately. It's really weird to feel that I never have everything done but then at the end of any given day I feel like I have done nothing. Does that even make sense? I think it is in part due to the fact that 90% of the things I do do are completely undone with in a matter of minutes thanks to 4 punk kids trashing my hard work!

3. I really need a cleaning lady. I have never needed a cleaning person so much in my entire life. I had someone clean for me for 5 years, 5 GLORIOUS years. Then we moved and she had to go. I cried. I still cry. My house is never clean all at the same time. The nooks and crannies of Samantha's room are so full of garbage that I just don't have time to stay on top of I may just shoot myself so I no longer have to worry about it!

4. I think it is quite possible that seasonal allergies may be the death of me.

5. I got a new calling at church. I am now teaching the CTR 6A class. It's a pretty rowdy bunch but with the aid of a giant bag of Starburst and Skittles they were AMAZINGLY well behaved this past Sunday.

6. We took the kids to Chili's for dinner last night for Family Home Evening followed by a bike ride. The bike ride was a necessity because of dessert that was inhaled in 2 min. flat!

7. For the record, the molten chocolate lava cake is way better than the white chocolate! even Bonnie thought so!

8. I wish I had taken my camera on our bike ride because it was so cute to see our little row of ducklings riding along down the sidewalk with papa duck in the front! Maybe next time!

9. I started a Facebook page for my photography, you can show you like me HERE! C'mon you never comment so you might as well show me you love me by clicking one tiny little link!! Pretty please with sugar on top, I equate my value as a person with the number of people that like me so my fragile state of self esteem lies in your hands!

10. I am the Queen of Procrastination!

THE END!

Pause

Last night Bonnie woke up at about 11:30 p.m. crying, she's had a bad dream. I was not to excited about getting up to deal with it because I had just dozed of in to the wonderful bliss of nothingness that comes with sleep. Terry had just entered some sort of REM cycle because he wasn't budgin'. So I got out of bed and went to settle the girl down. As I lay next to her in her little twin bed and she reached over and put her arm around my neck like she does when she's sleepy I thought wow, I can't believe I didn't want to get up and experience this. My baby, my BABY, is not a baby anymore and she is growing up so fast. I always wanted my kids to get bigger and now that I know we are done having babies I find myself constantly looking for the pause button. I think I really missed out on so much of when my older kids were little because I just wanted them to move on tho the next phase of life. I used to say,
"I just can't wait til they sleep through the night"
"I just can't wait till they can walk on their own"
" I just can't wait until they are in school"
and now I wish I could go back and suck up all the things I missed out on because I was just biding my time until I had more freedom. Now here I am the mom of an almost teenager who for all intents and purposes has the attitude of a teenager, a 10 year old who never has been anything but a teenager since she was 3, a boy who is finishing up kindergarten and a baby who's not really a baby anymore, I think the baby disappeared when I tossed the last of the diapers. Now I find myself not only looking for the pause button but the rewind button. I know I have done so many things wrong in my journey of motherhood but I just wish I could go back and remember all of the things I have forgotten. I wish I had been more vigilant at taking home videos and tape recordings. I have lots of pictures but you can't hear a 4 year old's giggle in a picture. So for all of you moms out there od little ones, take some time to suck up the littleness while you can because it is gone all to quickly and you will find yourself with way to many regrets.



After Bonnie had a hard time falling back to sleep she asked if she could come sleep in my bed but knowing that no one sleeps well when she is in our bed including her I made a compromise that she could make a bed and sleep on the floor by me. When Terry got out of bed this morning, she grabbed her blankets and climbed into my bed so she could snuggle me. It was the best!

April 365 Recap

Since so many of us doing the 365 project have hit a slump of sorts Wendy suggested that we do an Alphabet challenge for inspiration for the month of April. It was fun and helped find new inspiration as I plug on through this project.



A-Amazing Photographer. B-Bath and the Best Book Series Ever. C-Conference and Crocheting. D-Destroyed. E-Eating at the Cracked Egg. F-Fabulous Posing by Lesli. G-Groom's Jacket. H-Hard Labor. I-Ice Cream. J-Just Me. K-Kissey Face. L-Listening.
M-Magical. N-New Bed. O-Orangutan. P-Proper Self Portrait. Q-Quiet Time. R-Red Robin. S-Shopping. T-Together. U-Up. V-Violin. W-Wind. X-Xylophone. Z-Zobrist Boy