Yay for fellow Tarleton State University graduates (or almost grads)! Kim and I took a Video Production class together my last semester of college - one of the few classes that I really enjoyed going to! LOL! The class broke up into groups and each group filmed a video and edited it themselves. I remember that our professor was SO excited about the video our group was making (I really have no idea why… haha). My group was full of perfectionists (yes, I admit it) so we worked SO hard on it! You see, there was a film festival at the end of the semester and if it was good enough, it would make it to play on the big screen. I don’t know if I would have been more proud or embarassed to see my big mug on the big screen - but nevertheless - it would have been cool.

It WOULD have been cool…. if the computer we were using to create our movie had not been stolen 2 days before we were going to turn in our project. Yes, it was a tragic day when we found out our video was gone forever. Actually, I think our professor was more upset than we were - he was CONVINCED that we were going to win the festival. We most likely wouldn’t have won - but anyway… I’m sure the computer theif, wherever he is, enjoys watching “Georgia Price” - the short ‘documentary’ about an up and coming photographer, who used her point-and-shoot camera to photograph the lovely couple (that would be Eric and me… haha)!

I just remember that every day we would CRACK UP during class watching our poor acting skills and jokes that were probably only funny to us. I wish I could watch it right now. Shout out to GEORGIA!

Anyway, I enjoyed having class with Kim and was so thrilled when she contacted me to do her senior pictures! We spent one Sunday evening going across campus to the places that she wanted to remember!

Kim, I wish you the very best at your new job in Brownwood! You rock, girl!

Eric and I have some really awesome friends. Seriously, we feel SO blessed to have made some really great relationships with people in the last several years. Not only do we have amazing friends from our church here in Granbury, but we are so lucky to have a special relationship with some people over at Newspring Church in South Carolina - where we have been able to learn from and be encouraged by in the last few years. Every person that we’ve met from Newspring has been so incredibly humble and gracious in allowing us to come up there and hang out with them, learn from them, and even stay in their homes. The last time we made our way to South Carolina, we stayed with the Worship Leader, Lee McDerment, and his two roommates Joey and Craig (who both play in the Fuse Band - Newspring’s youth band). Apparently we aren’t TOO crazy - because when Joey found out his best friend was getting married in Dallas, he immediately thought of us and asked to stay out our house! Yay!

So this weekend was the wedding and we FINALLY got to see Joey! It was his first time to ride a plane and his first time in Texas and we wanted to make sure we showed him a good Texas time! So…. what do you do in a small town in Texas?

And then….. THIS. SO FUNNY.

This was at Jessie and Brandi, our amazing friends’, house. Jessie and Brandi let me shoot them for a mailer that we used for StoneWater Church a few months back! Don’t you want to see how cute they are? I knew it….

Brandi, you are GORGEOUS!

We are SO thankful for all of our incredible friends. Life just wouldn’t be the same without you!!

So. Working at home has it’s positives and negatives. I would say more positives than negatives…. but still. And then, there are some things that can be both positive AND negative, such as the puppy dogs. I LOVE my dogs. I mean it, there are the cutest little toots e-ver. Oh, you want to see them? Okay good…

Hazel (my Labradoodle) is on the left - Romeo (my Maltese) is on the right. You know they’re adorable.

They’re adorable MOST of the time. Sometimes, not so much. Such as - when it’s raining and they go outside clean and come back in muddy. OR when Hazel gets bored and decides it’s a good time to chew up my GLASSES (that was today). OR when Romeo gets jealous that I took Hazel for a jog and I come home to find that he’s escaped and 30 minutes later I find him 3 blocks down the road …… (BIG BREATH OF AIR)… but MOST of the time - they’re adorable.

Yesterday, they were on my “negatives” list of working at home. They wanted to go outside, so I let them out. I’d get upstairs and just in the rhythm of post processing, and then…. BARK! BARK!…. BARK! BARK!!! So I’d go down stairs, let them both in, go upstairs and get back to work. A few minutes later they would be downstairs by the backdoor barking to go out. Ahh. So - I did what any normal person who wanted to get ANY work done would do - I left the sliding glass door open for them to go in and out of. I mean - it’s 70 degrees - and sunny - why not?

I’ll tell you why not. Because around 1pm yesterday I was upstairs working and I heard a bunch of commotion downstairs. “Hello?” I yelled. Not that I expected anyone to answer… I figured it was the dogs - but it SURE sounded like a person in my house. I heard a bunch of chairs moving around and things being knocked over. Ummm… weird. So I creeped down the stairs to see who had invaded my house. By the way - I was SO ready for an attacker, with my leapord house shoes on - just saying. I walked in the living room to find no one but the dogs. Nothing was torn up and it didn’t seem like anything was knocked over.

Then I smelled it. It smelled like a skunk had sprayed in my living room. I thought, “There is no WAY a skunk just crawled its way up 2 stairs, onto my porch, into my house, and sprayed my two dogs.” I looked for a skunk in my house. I looked outside for a skunk. No skunk. Hmm… what the heck? I also noticed Romeo was rubbing his face on the hard wood floor. That was odd, he normally does that on the carpet, but not the hard floor!

I look outside again… then I walked around to the kitchen, and I saw it.

A HUGE. BLACK. SNAKE (I just shivered in disgust as I typed that). It was curled up  on the floor about a foot away from Romeo (who was still rubbing his face on the floor), and had his head up ready to attack again (I then knew Romeo had been bitten). I quickly hurried the dogs outside (so as not to get bit again…) and ran as fast as I could in my leapord print slippers to my 70 year old neighbor, Pat’s, house. I quickly rang the doorbell, told him the scenario, and a few minutes later we were back inside my house with a shovel to kill the beast.

Unfortunately, he was no longer there. Hm… unfortunately just DOESN’T seem to do this situation justice. It seems a little more than unfortunate to me. I had a snake in my house and we didn’t know where it was. A big snake. A HUGE snake. So… my legs were shaking and poor Pat was carefully looking under couches and tables while I stood in open areas that the snake was OBVIOUSLY not in. He looked for probably 15 minutes with no luck. I called Eric and my dad to come join the search and rescue destroy team. The men all looked for the snake for what seemed to be forever - it was probably an hour. No luck. We even let the bloodhounds back in to sniff the trail of the snake. Romeo just started eating and Hazel wanted to be rubbed. Fabulous.

*By the way - I knew the snake was a bullsnake (not poisonous) because Romeo got bit by one last year at my mom’s house and we took them both in to the vet for testing. Otherwise, I would have been at the vet at this time.

Finally, AND I MEAN FIIINAAALLLYYY, the boys pulled out the fridge and saw the snake curled up behind it. That little sucker was sneaky, though. Any time they moved the fridge, he slithered underneath it to protect himself. Here’s the boys trying to formulate a plan.

I think at this point, my dad had knocked the snake coo-coo and he crawled up under the fridge. So, then my dad unscrewed the back of the refridgerater and got the snake out and killed him. Oh, and for you PETA people, I’m sorry we killed a non-poisonous snake, but he deserved to die. He came right up onto MY porch, into MY house, and bit MY dog. He was SCARY, too. Say all you want, but if I see another one, he will also be a gonner.

And here is little snakey - I mean - HUGE snakey.

Lessons learned:

1: Snakes are only good if they are dead - and even then they are not good.

2: Leaving the backdoor open for extended periods of time is a no-no.

3: Twittering and event while it unfolds is always a must.

One day, that will make a great story. Oh wait, that’s today. Wasn’t that a good story?

Susan said her extended family has been trying to get together for 10 years to take a group picture. You can see why I felt honored for her to email and ask me to capture her growing family! What was even more cool, is that she and her family have owned a farm in Paluxy for decades that has some very historic farming equipment on the land! Susan told me that one of the tractors on the land was the first one in their county. Their family has also turned an old train car into a house…. um… SO awesome!

Susan, I really enjoyed getting to photograph you and your family! I hope that you treasure these images!

Lots of animals on the farm! I SOO would love to have them around all the time at my house….

This is inside the cable car! Not only was it restored and revamped, but Susan has decorated it so beautifully!

Granparents!! I LOVE it!

Susan told me that when she thinks of her grandma, she thinks of her hands. I thought it was so special to have a picture of everyone’s hands together!

The girls!

Ryan wanted do do a photoshoot, just because. Okay, so you want to know how to make a photographer happy? Book a session… just because. Ryan totally understands the value in documenting our vapor of a life! Plus, he told me that he wanted to support my business - opposed to going to someone else… so that’s DOUBLE brownie points for him! So, we met at the city park and had a very relaxed session, walking around, talking about how much of a dork we both are (Ryan is SOOOO OCD about random things and I’m …. well, I’m just weird all around… haha), and he let me snap lots of pictures along the way. Very fun!

I hope that you all will see the value in documenting all the stages in your life…. not just the ones that the world deems significant. Each day in our lives are significant and filled with an opportunity to be purposeful! I hope that you all will take a moment to stop, take in all that’s going on around you, and enjoy the little things in life. Oh, and by the way, don’t forget to book a session to help you remember those little things!

Ryan told me he was totally a kid at heart… so we had to go play on the playground!!

And here’s where I got in a bit of trouble…. Take a close look… while Ryan was laying on the slide… and kid came up behind him and was upset that it was taking him so long to go down the slide! I’m sorry, cute little kid. It was never my intention to frustrate your sliding schedule!! You are TOO funny!