I am still living...

I thought I would be better at posting regularly... well I guess life got really busy and I am really slow at it.

This weekend we had time to rest. Philip and I took Thursday, Friday, AND Saturday off for the holiday. It was one of the best weekends we have had in along time. We have been so stressed with work and school (well Philip with school) that we really haven't had a good break. We slept in on Thursday and had a great time with my family. It was a good day full of food and fun. Friday we didn't sleep in to much and went and had Thanksgiving with Philip's family. It was enjoyable and fun, even with the small fire we had in my mother-in-laws oven. We took family pictures:



It was fun.
Saturday we got up and met up with my good friend Annabella and her family. We were trading services for family portraits . We had a great time hanging out with our friends. It was the first time since our wedding that we had pictures made of us. She did a great job on ours, she gave us a sneak peek:



And this is a peek at Annabella and her husband:


I love that we have such different styles of photography and can offer Memphis two different looks when it comes to weddings.

We actually spent the rest of Saturday cleaning our house and catching up on laundry. I am always surprised at how quickly we fill up our laundry baskets. The piles never seem to end! I hate laundry with a passion and to get caught up on it is nice. Though by Tuesday I am sure the pile will be large again... Saturday evening consisted of more family time with the Kenney's for our nephews 2nd birthday. There was an intense game of Catch Phrase that went down. Found out that I am highly competitive and love to win. I et really worked up when people don't play right or are dumb at something. I have a bit of elitism in me... I need to get over that.

Today I got to watch another set of friend's little boy, Christian. He is a darling little man (16 months I believe) and rather fun to be with. We are great buddies and even though he was really tired from the holiday weekend we had a good time together and he feel asleep in my arms for a good while. I loved hanging with him but we are still about ten years from having one of our own...

And one of my favorite times of the weekend, the nap this afternoon. We set up our Christmas tree Saturday and we had it lit this afternoon when I went down for my nap when I work up the lights outside were dim and the tree lights filled the room. It brought back so many memories from my childhood. I always love when the room is lit only with tree lights. Amydog was a sleep next to me on the couch and Philip was sitting besides me playing on the computer. I laid there and thought, all is well.

A tired body

Whew!
Yesterday we had a 15 hour wedding.
No lie, 15 hours.
It just about did me in. That is the longest I have ever shot and boy did it make it so sore. About 10 hours in my oh so comfy shoes decided that they didn't want to be comfortable any more. Apparently my feet swelled a good bit during the day and my pinky toe nail decided it wanted to cut into the toe next to it. Not a good idea little toe.
It was a great wedding, one of the best we have shot to date (well I would hope that every wedding we do is always better then the previous one). The family was awesome and the bride and groom were fabulous together.

It was great to see the community that surrounded the bride and groom on their wedding day. Friend from both families came to help and serve the couple on their special day. The couple got ready at the bride's parents house and no less then 20 women were there to serve. At one point all the women gathered around the bride and prayed for her as she started out her new home. Unknown to me at that time, the men were doing the same for the groom in a separate part of the house. Philip and Ben were able to participate in the gathering of the men.
Something that I really loved about the wedding was the inclusion of many Jewish traditions in the ceremony (the bride's father's family is Jewish) . Philip and I included several Jewish traditions in our wedding and I wish we had done more. The couple made sure to give a detailed list of all the traditions in the program for the guest to have.

My favorite tradition included was the dancing of the horah. This dance goes on for 45 minutes straight and boy is it fun. After about 15 minutes of photographing the dance I handed over my camera to Ben and I jumped in on the fun. I got really excited when the bride mentioned in our prewedding meeting that they would be dancing the horah and she told me not to be shy and get in. So I did. It was so much fun! But I am so out of shape! It is a very fast paced dance and 30 minutes of that wore me out! I was so out of breath when it finished. Once you are in the dance it is really really hard to get out because it is danced in a circle with multiple cirlces being built outside the main circle. If you are in the middle, you have to stay for the whole time.
I also got in on some of the "club" dancing that happened later in the night. Philip made sure to document that. I'll be sure to post those images when I find them in all the other images.

I started downloading the card from last night at 9 this morning. I finished downloading cards at 4 this afternoon! That translates to 50gb of cards and 4300 images. Yep the most we have ever taken in one day. When you have three people shooting for 15 hours, you take a lot of images. I hope to get it down to 800 final images to present to the couple. I hope I can weed it down that far.

But now I am resting. I stayed in bed until 1 this afternoon (well getting up occasionally to check on the card downloading progress) and had Philip pick up Pei Wei for lunch for us. I feel a little lazy but I know that my body needs the rest. Every muscle in my body aches. Even my toe nails hurt. I think that I will finally break down and get a massage this week. There are some knots in my back that I really need to get worked out so I can sleep better.

Philip was such a trooper yesterday. He has been sick all week and pretty tired from grad school but he didn't complain at all about the long day. I knew he would be exhausted at the end and would have to get up and be at chrch at 7:45 for run through. Without complaining he work really hard along side me and didn't complain at all this morning when the alarm went off way to early. He is such a great husband. Here I am still sitting in my pjs and he jsut left again for to play at church. It is nice to see him not getting upset with me when I get to rest and he doesn't. Instead he makes sure that rest and don't work at all on days after weddings. I am so blessed by him...

Now to finish chilling for the day.

On a personal note...

So I finally caved and decided to start a personal blog.

There are many things that have been on my mind lately and some of them I just can't write on our company blog.

I want to be completely open on this blog.

It will be raw.

It will be very open.

I might vent.

I might get upset.

I might be happy.

I might have improper grammar now and then.

I might just let my fingers type and see what comes out.

I might curse.

So be prepared for complete openness here.

I do not intend to offend anyone, I just plan on being open with my thoughts, feelings, and emotions.

For those who dare to read,

thank you.

Savannah