Click Chicks Retreat!!

I have been so excited to blog about this!! About six weeks ago, I joined a group of women photographers - Click Chicks. We have a yahoo group and meet once a month to talk photography. I've only been to one get together, but after that first gathering I was hooked! A big group of awesome girls - all as obsessed with taking pictures (some more!) as I am! I felt right at home with all these amazing ladies - even though many/most/all! are much more accomplished than I. It was fun to laugh about funny experiences with clients, share stories, encourage each other and mostly just be with a group who share the same passion.

I learned so much and was so inspired by the things these women are doing I couldn't wait for the beach retreat at the end of April. I was so glad I got to go (Milton* (o: had an awful week at work, so it was up in the air until the last minute.)

I carpooled with Lorna http://carmanphoto.wordpress.com/

and we talked and talked the whole way. She was so much fun and we found so many things we have in common - the church, friends, family in Utah, etc. I was so surprised when I found out she is the grand daughter of the owner of Busath Photography in Utah. I know many family members out there are familiar with their amazing photography.

The best part of the drive to Pacific City was when we were almost there and we were oohing and ahhing at the gorgeous sunset. Then we decided to stop the car right where we were and run out with our cameras to try and catch it. As you can see, we weren't quite fast enough, but it was so much fun and so spontaneous. Something that's hard to do when your a busy mom. There are so many times when I see something beautiful or inspiring and I wish I could get a picture. There was something so liberating about jumping out of the car and running to get a picture. I told Lorna, one of these days I want to do that - just drive around and find things to jump out of the car and take pictures of. It was the perfect start to our photography retreat!

This beach house was the perfect place to hang out together and talk pics all day long. We spent hours looking at blogs and websites, talking about prices, where we each are professionally, where we want to go, what equipment is our favorite, what we like to shoot, etc. etc.

Melissa listening intently - she did a lot of work on her website over the weekend - I love her website, check it out... http://soulmatesphoto.com/

I loved looking through the wedding photo albums that some of the ladies brought. They were gorgeous!

There were lots of these all around. (o:

Some of Sara's "swag" (did I remember that word right??) from WPPI - (a wedding photographer tradeshow).

Deyla was such a riot - she is so fun to hang out with and an amazing photographer! http://www.deylahussphotography.com/

Good times, good times...
This was the only picture I got with Bunn - she rocks!

http://www.msbunn.com/

Hey, what do you know? I'm on the other side of the camera for once...

Christy and Melissa were Mac twins (o: working hard!

http://www.studiochristy.com/

"Deyla, the chewed up ones go in the YELLOW bowl!"

Missy's smokin' hot Poloroid camera she won! I didn't even know they made these anymore!

http://www.missy-cochran.com/

Missy's my hero. She's the one who brought Click Chicks all together. She's a good friend and an inspiration - and besides that, she's so much fun to hang out with!

Sara's parents' beach house was adorable!

Angela's cool shoes - I love red!

http://annierudenphotography.blogspot.com/

Annie is adorable, I love this action shot of her.

The paparazzi!

I loved getting to know Angela! She's so awesome...

http://monarchdigitalimaging.blogspot.com/

Lorna and Annie playing back some shots.

http://carmanphoto.wordpress.com/

I love these of Sara - she was our awesome host for the weekend...
http://www.saragrayphotography.com/

What a hottie - I wish I could pull of "hottie" pictures. I would look like such a nerd.

This captures Deyla's personality so well - you can't help but be happy around Deyla!

The whole group - at least on the day I was there . . .

More links...

Mel - Missy's sis and our honorary prego photographer who luckily felt (or pretended to feel) good during the retreat. http://www.melaniejadephotographer.com/

The most adorable Pocahontus ever - Dianne http://diannebentzphotography.blogspot.com/

and Kim http://www.kimoneilphotography.com/#

who came just a couple hours before Lorna and I had to leave. We all kind of came and went over the course of 4 days - so most everyone could come for at least part of the time.

Thanks to Sara - the most awesome hostess ever - look, she even cooked for us!

I had a blast. I loved staying up until 3:00 a.m. chatting, clicking away at the beach and just hanging out and laughing. I came home so inspired and excited to continue working toward a real live, actual amazing photography business.

I can't wait for our next get together in June.
Thanks Click Chicks!

Shoe Shopping Date

For Natalie's birthday Grandma T. sent her some money to go shoe shopping!

She was so excited and we finally got to go last week. We made it into a special date.
We went to Famous Footwear to find the lovely shoes you see below and had a lovely lunch at Wendy's. We also ran a quick errand to a craft store. It was so fun to have some one on one time together. And Natalie loved wearing her awesome new shoes to school that afternoon. You can't tell in the picture, but they light up in rainbow colors. Pretty S N A Z Z A Y. (o: Thanks mom!

What's Up Pussy Cat?

What's Twilight been up to, you ask?

Well, let me tell you. I haven't written any posts on her for a while.

She is getting huge - she seems full size to us now, but probably has some growing to do.

Twilight has chilled out significantly in the past two months, though she still has her "insanity moments" where out of the blue she'll tear across the house like a bat out of "you know where" and slide across the kitchen floor and slam into the vertical blinds and hit the glass window. We're not sure what the purpose of this is - maybe she thinks she can break out?? But it sure is entertaining. Especially the slide skid across the Pergo floor.
Twilight now resides in the garage at night time, now that it is warmer and we are all happier for it. No more middle of the night wake up calls. She has all the necessities out there and actually loves the change of scenery. She explores and chases bugs and sometimes we find her in very interesting locations in the morning. Like on the storage rack hanging from the ceiling. She also loves the top of our van. We have gotten accustomed to little paw prints on the windshield.

In a recent post I mentioned sharing the idea with Angela that maybe we should get a kitty leash for Twilight. Angela informed me that she would "fweak" out. She wasn't far off. She did not like getting it on the first time. But she has been out several times now and has learned to deal with it. She seems to love getting out for a better view of the birds, grass and bugs.


The purpose of the leash is definitely not to take our cat for a "walk".
This is what she does if you try to walk her.
Stubborn cat. (o:
We just take her out when we're in the yard and just let her wander around the length of the leash.

Angela and Twilight have a hilarious relationship. As you can see Twilight really puts up with a LOT. This picture says it all. There are days when enough is enough and those are the days when you will see a fresh scratch on Angela's arm or cheek. But this doesn't deter Angela for long. She just can't resist.

Angela seriously cannot keep her hands of the cat. Poor kitty.

Mother's Day

Look what I got for Mother's Day! (O:

I like how it looks like Angela is pushing me around. She'd be pretty darn strong to pull that off.
The weekend I went on the Click Chicks retreat, Mo* got the girls some skates/roller blades.
For Mother's Day he got me my own so now we can all roller blade together. We've been three times already. It takes about 3 hours to get all our gear on, but we have a lot of fun and the girls are getting good. I'm getting better too. As long as Mo* isn't close by trying to do show offy tricks and making me nervous. (o:

This is a dorky picture, but I had to show off my "hat" Natalie made for me for Mother's Day. She brought it from school, so I assumed that everyone in her class made these crowns. I found out later that her teacher had them make signs with a message on them. They held up the sign for a picture and then made a cute frame for the picture. Anyway, Natalie decided to turn her sign into a hat and stapled it herself somehow. Her teacher and I thought that was funny she came up with that herself. What a creative girl. She made me wear the hat another day when I was teaching preschool too. All the kids loved it. (o:

In addition, I got the lovely treat of breakfast in bed (with cute homemade cards, of course) and a delectable spaghetti and hot dog dinner later that night. (o: "King's Spaghetti" as Mo* called it. As long as I don't have to cook it - I love it! I wish Mother's Day came more than once a year! (o:

Angela hearts OMSI

How does Angela love OMSI?

Let us count the ways . . .
One

Two

Three!

Four

Five

Six

Seven!

And here's a hilarious one I had to throw in of one of Angela's preschool buddies.

I thought it would be fun to try out my new fixed 50mm lens on this field trip and boy was I right! What a blast - until my battery died. )O: Oh well - at least I got these fun ones!

Frog Blog

Look what we found in our backyard. Isn't he/she cute?

Perfect opportunity to play with my macro lens!
Sarah was the first to hold him (we'll go with the male pronouns - frogs seem boyish to me)
She loved holding him. He was pretty skittish though - so it was tricky.

The way he hopped all over made Natalie nervous - she kept her distance.

But with some encouragement from daddy...

She got brave.

He seemed to like Miss Nat.

Natalie even let daddy put him in her hair! (o:

This was one pic of Angela. She enjoyed watching the frog with the other girls. Nothing more. And quite frankly, we weren't sure if she'd accidentally smoosh him, so we didn't push the issue.

Goodbye Frog! Thanks for the good times!

Standards Night "Tuning in to Virtue"

virtue - high merit, high caliber, righteousness, morality

Every year in young women's we have some kind of standards night, where we emphasize the importance of keeping high standards in the world today. Some of the standards we teach the youth include language, modesty in dress/appearance, choosing uplifting media (avoiding R rated movies), not drinking or smoking, avoiding any type of pornography, etc.

This year, our presidency decided to focus on the new value Virtue for our activity. Ever since I was in Young Women's they have had 7 values: Faith, Divine Nature, Individual Worth, Knowledge, Choice and Accountability, Good Works and Integrity. Our whole goal-setting program is centered around these values. This year, the general presidency also added the value of Virtue, which is definitely something that we need in the world today.

We planned our night around the theme "Tuning in to Virtue" and talking about how the media can affect us for better or worse. We had Cherie sitting in the front of the room pretending to flip channels with her remote and had several shows and commercials come on...

I didn't get any pictures of the commercials in here, but they were so fun. We divided up the girls in groups at the beginning and gave them a bag of props, a product to sell and a slogan. All the products were from the exciting new "Virtue" line. The girls had 5 minutes to come up with a commercial that they performed in between our TV shows. They did so great. These were a few of my favorite slogans we gave the girls...

“Virtue” high heels commercial – “Raise your standard! Everyone will look up to you. It’s like being on a pedestal.”

“Royal” Jeans commercial – “My pedigree is divine. Don’t mess with these genes!”

“Virtue” Perfume commercial – “One spray keeps overzealous boys away!”

The Biggest Loser

Kelly did an awesome job of having her contestants drop the weight (backpacks filled with bricks) of sin and poor choices that can weigh us down.
I wrote a skit for "Soaprah: A Cleaner Talk Show"
McKinna - one of our young women from last year, who is back from college, did an awesome job of playing the devil's advocate in this skit. She was hilarious bragging about all the smutty shows she loves to watch and making fun of people who need to "live a little" and stop being so closed minded. It was fun. And of course, just like real Oprah - everyone got parting gifts - a golden box (since the color for virtue is gold) full of little reminders about choosing good media. Oohh - should've gotten a picture...

Kirsten did a really fun cooking show making things like fruit salad. And comparing them to a good book or movie, but then sprinkling dirt on top of one of them. Sometimes there's just one bad part in a show or a book that can ruin the whole thing - no matter how good the rest of it is.

Lisa did a really fun Price is Right with a couple games like "Worth of Rubies" and "Casting Pearls Before Swine" - she is so creative. The girls seemed to really have fun getting into these games. One of the memorable moments was when one of the girls was choosing which pearls (ping pong balls) was okay to toss to a little pig. She chose the ball that said "first kiss" so Lisa was able to bring up that you shouldn't just toss that "pearl" to any pig who comes along. (o:

And finally, how can you have a Pop Culture night without American Idol? Or in our case "American Ideal"

I made some funny signs for my characters to hold up as they played the judges. I was Ryan Seacrest. Penny sang a beautiful song about staying close to the Savior. She totally blew the judges away - even though at first they were very skeptical that she chose a spiritual song. (o:

Look how happy the judges were with Penny's performance!

My favorite part was when the judges flipped to their happy faces at the end and Randy was in church clothes (see above). This was his last line...

Randy – Dude, I was so touched by that song, I have never felt this way and I have listened to a LOT of music. What time is church, because you are the BOMB, dude and I am so there!!

I crack myself up.