OH YEEEAH!

Finally. Finally I have figured out an easier way to post photos! YAY!!!! Thank you once again google. I love you. I should honestly get a job there. If for nothing else, the amazing marketing I do for them all the time. I mean, except for them killing hello. That was evil and if I had enough energy I'd have gotten together a posse and stood out somewhere with picket signs to stop that. See, that'd be my first order of business in my new position at Google. Bring hello BACK and better than ever.

Anyway. I'm just clicking around through random photos lately can you tell? Apparently Canon batteries aren't so fond of being charged on transformers and it has totally zapped my two batteries. I had one crappy one and one good one. Now I have two crappy ones. Honestly, I never had a battery grip b/c I could shoot solid 12 hours at a wedding and never change my battery once. Never slow down and now it is one bar as soon as I take it from fully charged and put it in. Lasts a couple of hours at most. It is just evil. So, now I'll just do the next best thing, buy a generic and just charge it in the car instead.
*sigh*

One of my all time favorites

My poor Grandma is thinking, "Did I really admit to being related to them?".
She's a trooper.

My Favorite Look

Test

I'm just testing ANOTHER method here. We'll see.
In the meantime, one of these ladies is my great aunt. How bout that? I really do come from a LONG line rockin tough gals!

How it is done in the UK

See, the only time we really had fireworks was 4th of July. I know people get them for New Years etc... but we just never did. So when I think fireworks, I think swimsuits, bar b que, beer and HOT. It is damn HOT outside. Sweating. HOT.

However, here in the UK there is Bonfire night which I'd need to look up and research fully before I go spouting off facts. It is just what I've heard and there is an actual name but I think I get it wrong, being that I'm too lazy to do research right now for posting in my blog. That is all the info you get. ha!

In and around November 5th there are fireworks galore and bonfires. People party and burn and explode things. Loads of fun! :)

Gosh when could we EVER have a bonfire in West Texas? Rarely.

So on our anniversary we popped off some fireworks right in our backyard - woohoo! No fire hazard either, but this photo cracks me up.

Bliss, Romance, Ecstacy and a Dirty Diaper Please

Five whole years of it.

Yep. Five years ago today, I said "I do" to the love of my life. I can honestly say that too, because unlike MANY people I actually KNOW this. Thank you. I remember how nervous I was, not about marrying him, not for one second. It was about the show we had to put on, you know that is all a wedding is is just a show, in the end. I'd have NEVER pulled it off without everyone's help either. So many people, even those I never expected, did things for us from decorations, or dresses, or parties and showers to cakes and receptions and hanging things. Oh gosh I swear I could go on and on. I felt like people believed in us that much, that they did not think twice about pitching in.

I was nervous for that door to open, for Mike to see me. My hair didn't look like I wanted, damn the weather, I was freezing to death, damn the weather, and well...I'd just envisioned this moment for awhile not as long as some do, but long enough to be nervous about the moment that door opened and all eyes were on me.

You'd think as much as I enjoy being the center of attention I'd enjoy being the center of attention, but...yeah not so much. It was nerve wracking having all those eyes on me and I couldn't even look at Mike until I got there.

THe most important photograph I wanted though is one of my all time favorites. I insisted on it, I cared about no other photo as much as I cared about this one. His face, when I walked through the door. (THat is also my very most important shot to get when I am shooting a wedding, whether the bride thinks she wants it or not, she does...).

I wish I'd have had some xanax or tequila to chll the nerves out just a tiny bit. See, once I got on the platform, I thought I was going to pass out. I was mortified. I started getting really really really hot and it was actually really really really cold. My head started to swim a little, I felt woozy, I had to work at standing up straight. I remembered us watching some video show that had people fainting at their wedding and MIke said, "You do that I'll leave you there and walk off." Now of COURSE he was joking, but don't think it did not go through my mind. How EMBARRASSING would that be???? Luckily I held strong.

He had the sweetest look on his face. He was so damn smitten with me. Okay yeah me too.

It was a great day and I was very overcome with emotion. I tried really hard to let every guest to see inside our relationship and really feel our emotion. I don't know about them, but I did. ;)

Anyway I love how people would look at us when they'd ask us where we met. Not at the grocery store, not at the gym, not through a friend or at Church. We met at a.... BAR! Not just any bar, but a Country bar. Those are presumably worse for relationships right? ha! Well, I doubt either of us was looking for what we ended up with that night, but slowly (per Mike's under-zealous approach to dating) we talked when we'd see each other and by the time we got to that first date, after that one issue with someone standing someone up and I can only attribute some higher power to pushing forward to allow a second chance, we have not ever left each other's side since. Obviously less some hunting trips, girls weekends and let us not forget the times the military intervenes to cause for a short break from one another. I came to the realization that our Grandfathers had to have a hand in this. I believe that likely could have been the conversation that made Mike decide his initial impression of me was way off base and we did, indeed, have several things in common - a whole lot that was not common too of course, but that one conversation still stands out so vividly. I could think back and imagine them both up in Heaven, in their coveralls nudging us toward one another. It was time. I needed him, he needed me. When we finally got a chance to talk, it was pretty fast moving from there.

Oh fast is such an understatement where Mike and I are concerned! ha! Obviously we did not get married a month later or anything, but in the scheme of things, we certainly waste no time moving right along with life.

Our relationship grew so fast, into so much, I don't know that I've ever in my life had an ounce of such an infestation of butterflies. He made my heart swell so often. Okay he still does. ha!

In five years time, we've gotten married, gotten pregnant a few months later and had a baby and then shockingly added another one just 22 months later, sold our house, moved to Merkel to that (shudder) house. We've lost loved ones, we've gained new friends, we've been separated for months, started businesses, changed vehicles, gone through our own personal tragedies and grown together as one damn fine family. Recently we've uprooted ourselves and move across the ocean to the other side of the world. I hear so often how that makes people grow apart, many have a hard time being somewhere foreign, away from their friends and family however, we have gotten closer. To be honest once the boys got here we didn't really have any time together at all. Mike worked two jobs while I was at home with the boys and trying to work my one job from home with the enormous job of keeping up with two small boys. Anytime Mike was able to be home, I had to go out and shoot and then I'd be up until the weeeee hours of the morning working while he slept. This is how we went on for a long long time. We might see him at lunch and on the weekends some, but that was about it. This whole FAMILY TOGETHER thing was just beyond our reach. Shortly before we left, I was still not sleeping and working as much as I could around the boys, but Mike went down to one job finally, which called for me to work even more. We wanted him WITH us though. So at least he got to spend some more time with the boys and we did get a good deal more time together than before, albeit it broken into bits but it was better than nothing.

Coming over here, I am not working yet (just trying to finish up some unfinished business) and Mike only has his one job. His new position does call for a lot more hours but we are still together an awful lot and that is what we wanted so badly. I get to see my husband. I get to hear him and the boys wrestling and giggling all the time. The boys wait at the window most days for Daddy to show up knowing there will soon be a wrestling match or tickle fest taking place. They eat it up. Our weekends are all ours. We try to go do things outside as much as we can. We're planning trips and vacations (holidays) as a family. It is blissful.

Mike has been a wonderful thing for me. He is such a gentle soul, too gentle sometimes. He handles my "rough" nature very well most of the time and is patient and understanding when I am not -- vice versa. We are so very very different, but in most cases we compliment each others differences. Not to say that he doesn't drive me out of my mind half the time and I can only imagine how much I drive him nuts too. He appreciates my weirdness and I appreciate his silliness. I find it refreshing to be around someone who honestly has no idea how awful some people can be, how dark the rest of the world is. It is like we live in this sunny little patch of life and while there are definitely rainy days - there is a bubble where no evil can ever enter again. It is sort of a safety net for me, that I am never reminded of things that I used to have to be reminded of all the time. At the same time, I would do anything and everything in my power, to keep him from knowing those things, or seeing it. I think some folks might sometimes misconstrue what I say when I say that, but if you grew up like me and you marry someone that grew up like Mike - then you would understand. While I certainly cannot relate to his childhood and he most definitely cannot relate to mine - we try very hard to take into consideration our very different beginnings and make them into one hell of an ending.

I think back and remember how there was no way on earth I'd have ever in a million years foreseen my future going this way. Not at all. Is it what I expected that night I met him? Ha, far from it! I figured we'd date for a few months, go on about our separate business. I'd go on and move to Austin and he'd find himself a nice wholesome girl and get married and have lots of babies.

Well... I did move out of Abilene, he did marry himself a girl, wholesome isn't really any sort of word to use to describe me and we met in the middle on the babies. You certainly can't ever ever know where you'll be in a day, much less five years down the road. I'd never take back one second of it though. There are far too many women standing at the door waiting for me to croak! ha! I swear I don't believe I've ever heard so many of my dear loved ones, family and friends say that if I didn't work out, they love me and all but they'd be beating down his door. I suppose I should stay on my toes then.

I definitely got a good one. How I lucked out, well I'll just never know. He gives me something I only ever dreamt of, something I never ever knew was real. I just thought it was something people made up for songs and movies. I'll be damned, it IS real and somehow it smacked me in the forehead. So for once, I pulled my head out of my butt and snatched it up.

I've got that guy that, yeah...he leaves his dirty clothes on the floor and repeats the same story to me still to this day that he's told me 30 times. He also filled my heart back up when it was nearing the proverbial "E". He showed me another side of the world, where people are genuine and where they really DO love you...genuinely. There is no agenda - just the genuine article.

I'm a dork and you know that song by Keith Urban? "I Wanna Be Your Everything"?

I can specifically remember listening to that song and thinking there was NO SUCH thing as a man that wanted that. I remember praying sometimes, to find that, to just know that in my life, just for awhile even. I met him and I KNEW he was it. He was that guy from that song, the one for me. The one who really thought those things.

Still to this day, on just this evening, he hugged me for a moment and it was just as great, as the one I got when he came home from his first deployment away from me. It is still just as comforting and fulfilling now as it was way back then. I just don't feel as small in his arms as I once did, but hey I guess it can't ALL be perfect right? OH well.

Oh and P.S. my dirty clothes are probably laying right on top of his. However, since they are ON his, they are not technically ON the floor. Gotta word these things right!

Shortly after our engagement, which incidentally happened just shortly after his return from deployment.
One of our engagement photos - courtesy of Bandi Jones

One on the fateful evening, some five years ago today. Man...we've aged a lot awfully fast! ha



hahaha. This one just cracks my ass up. My first skiing trip. Or, as Mike calls it I think... The ski trip of Mike's nightmares. Hey, I wasn't THAT bad, I'm inventive to say the least. I now know my place is in the warm by the fire with hot cocoa. It is where I shall stay unless someone wants to buy me a snowmobile. hehe. I wanted real snow, I got it. Some blizzard blew in while we were up there on the mountain, well it seemed like a blizzard anyway.

It was fun and then I wound up pregnant a few weeks later. How'd THAT happen?

Bliss, Ecstacy, Romance and a Dirty Diaper Please

Five years ago today a door opened and from the cold outside where I stood with my Dad, I looked into a vast room warm and full of loving smiling faces. At the other side of this room stood the other side of my heart. The sweetest look I'd ever seen, smiling at me (I think I even saw his chest puffed out). At the end of this aisle, was my prize. I'd gone through all of the obstacles and through the trials, tribulations and losses. I'd done it all, I'd come out on top, victorious. Here was the ending of that life and the beginning of the new one. A re-birth. Looking back now, as I had cursed the weather for messing up my hair, making my freeze to death with my LITERAL cold feet, and thanking everyone that came out on that weather miserable evening to witness this event. It was like the award ceremony at the end of the season, the inauguration for the new President. It was my entry into happiness.

I can see now, that the weather, can metaphorically represent my past and the heart aches I'd been through. The awfulness that was my life, I stood there in the cold with my sister and my Dad, holding their hands and this door opened, to warmth, light and love. I was nearly frozen solid by nervousness, my gosh when have I ever had such stage fright? Hated being the center of attention? but I was actually kind of petrified for a moment and wanted to just run to the front so that everyone was at least looking at BOTH of us and not me alone.

I can still to this day, remember that look on his face, it makes my heart thump a few beats faster. No one has ever looked at me that way. Never. No one ever will again. That is a look I can only get from him.

Can anyone else just LOOK at someone, and let them know that they are so loved, forever safe, comforted, supported and always theirs to love? I get that from him, still. I catch him once in awhile when he doesn't realize it, and I am getting that look. Is there anything that can make you feel more special? Even after all this time? It means so much to me, to see him out of the corner of my eye looking at me that way.

I felt as though our wedding night was a huge celebration of life, love and future. It was celebrated and witnessed by so many people. So many people came together to help us put it together, to see us, to wish us well and let us know how happy they were for us. I never expected such a turn out, I've always felt like there was a special hand over the church that night. In that tiny town in the middle of nowhere Texas, on a cold, foggy rainy November night, so many made their way out through the awful weather to be there with us. Inside there was warm light, warm hearts and just a glow of happiness. It is almost dream-like now. The day itself was a whirlwind and never would have come together had it not been for SO many others. A few folks in specific of course! I could never pull anything like that off alone.

How little we knew that the whirlwind would never stop. Fast paced is an extreme understatement where Mike and I are concerned. Very much so. A few months after our blissful evening we found out our house would now be four, not me, him and the dog. We were blessed with our sweet little boy just 13 months after our wedding and much to our surprise, our second little bundle of wildness wrapped up in a beautiful baby boy a mere 22 months later.

In the grand scheme of things, when you sit and put 5 years on a piece of paper, it honestly is not that long. Five years and we've gotten married, had two babies, sold our home, moved to Merkel and then on to England! Who knows where on earth the next 5 years will take us, but I know I will not be bored.

We have been blessed. So very blessed from the first moment we met. Um, the OFFICIAL meeting, not the one someone swears took place before. hahaa!

Oh and where did this bliss begin? I love telling people this, because I love the line, "You can never meet anyone there." Well, I did. I am sure we're a special case but I'll take it. It was not the grocery store, not the gym, not even through a friend or at church and no, not online either. We met at a BAR! Not just any bar, but a Country bar because those are presumably worse for dramatic high class relationships right? (Think Urban Cowboy).

I'll never be convinced otherwise that there weren't a couple of worn callused hands working magic from above. See Mike was under one impression of me, but we began talking anyway, we went on a date, after someone stood someone up and beyond all reasoning a second chance was given. On our first date, I think the conversation that really got things rolling, was that of our Grandfathers. The similarities were uncanny and we'd both lost them to prostate cancer within a couple of years of one another. So I could only look back and imagine them walking about, whistling a diddy in their coveralls making sure we found each other and moved on together. From that one date, things grew insanely fast, so fast it was scary. Too good to be true, but sometimes I think he is. Just too good to happen to me, yet here he is, happening to me as are those amazing little boys. Every single day, they happen. The one that looks like me and the one that looks like him. The one that acts like him... (oh help me please!) and the one that well, just acts like himself with too many of my personality traits.

We are so different but compliment each other in just the right ways. We drive each other absolutely insane with nit picky little things but we laugh about it. We honestly never fight. We argue, we get a little huffy sometimes (i.e. I get pissy) but we've never screamed, called names, screeched the tires driving away in anger. Nothing.

I complain about his laundry or inability to find the garbage can right beneath the counter where he sat that trash. He complains about my incessant shedding of hair, how am I not bald seriously??? That's about the extent of it. Nothing that two people that live together wouldn't get annoyed with. We don't get enough time alone together, we're just now getting time as a family together.

It is awesome and amazing and I feel...what's that? Yeah I'll say it again. Blessed.

I am indeed blessed to have found the love of my life, to marry him and have babies and make a life.

"I've waited all night for this moment

To watch the day kiss the darkness goodbye

And I barely remember falling asleep

But the minute I opened my eyes

Every dream comes true

When I look at you

I see heaven

I see an angel

Lying here next to me

Bringing out the best in me

Hearts entangled

Wrapped in forever

This close together

Me holding you,you holding me

You opened my eyes,baby

I see,heaven"

Emerson Drive

So, I raise my imaginary glass and toast to us. Is that arrogant? To another amazing five years! Who knows what on earth we'll get ourselves into with that much time, but I'm sure interested in finding out!

I love you baby. Thank you so much for finding the other side of me that got lost such a long time ago. I am so lucky to have you and thank my lucky stars always for the day we finally got together and had square dominoes pizza, great conversation and a Kevin Costner movie.

(Now dear Lord! Someone fly over here and babysit so we can go on a date!!!!!!!!!!).

hahahaha!