Back in April, a good friend had asked me to shoot her wedding reception. Now, let me just stop you there. No, I'm not a photographer. Do I love taking pictures? Absolutely! Do I love weddings? Heck yes! So naturally, I didn't have to think twice about it-- that is, after some careful warnings and quite a ball of nerves. I spent all my spare time the two and a half weeks before learning everything I could about photography. I read a book my Mom gave me like two years ago for Christmas, and an abundance of YouTube videos. I thought I was fairly prepared going in, but oh what a whirlwind!
The place was GORGEOUS. I have seen a handful of receptions in my life that were held in a church Cultural Hall that took my breath away. This was one of them. There was soft lighting, greenery everywhere, and white Christmas lights to top it off. I tried to be as "obnoxious" as I could, taking tons and tons of pics (filled up my memory card two hours in, had to delete some as I went to get more space...) Luckily her family thought I was fairly funny, so I got a few candid smiles out of them. I tried shooting from lots of angles, using different lenses, and varying the use of my flash. That was probably the hardest part of the whole thing honestly-- the low lighting. Since I'm not a photographer, I only had the flash that comes standard on my camera. No stands, no bounce cards, no external flash (they're a little pricey!) A fair amount of the pictures were blurry or had a bit of noise. I did my best to clean them up with my editing software. Here are a few of my favorites:
In other news, as many of you know, we've been contemplating moving to Denver for Jake's work. The discussion came up again for us to consider. At first, I was VERY skeptical and nervous about it. We decided to take some time to fast and pray about it, and I didn't feel like I was getting an answer. We decided I might need to see the area to get a feel for it, to see if it could work.
Going into our little trip, I was feeling super positive about moving, confident that was the right thing. We got in Thursday night and spent Friday morning on the campus of Denver University. (I was thinking about looking into their Master's program, but it ended up being way too expensive for us.) We proceeded to the temple grounds and I had a great time taking lots of pics of all the tulips on the grounds!
It was getting to be lunch time and I think we were both a little grumpy, so by the time we left I wasn't feeling too great emotionally.
We grabbed some lunch at this Chicago-like restaurant with Italian Beef, our fave! So delicious. :) We were both pretty exhausted by then, but felt like we should go see the warehouse Jake would be working in. Don't really know what to say about that-- it was a warehouse. I probably wasn't in the right frame of mind to really get a good feel for it, I was just so tired. We ended up heading back to the hotel room and crashed for about an hour before we had dinner with his co-worker and his family.
We had a great time eating dinner and playing games with them. There was a guy in their ward that came over and talked with us about Denver University some too, so that was cool. It was a really strange mix of emotions, enjoying time with them, but I also felt strongly pressured to make the move for them. Which I knew wasn't the right reason to do something so life changing, but I felt the pressure was so intense.
Saturday we went downtown and saw some sights for a bit. It was a surprisingly clean city! We had a bit of fun on the steps of the capitol:
That afternoon we got to spend time with my brother, Alan, and his family. We got to see my two nephews' Flag Football games, which was SO awesome! I love getting to do those kinds of things as an aunt. :) That night we got some delicious food from a "Ma and Pa" type restaurant called Georgia Boys. Delicious BBQ! We chilled talking about the fam and things for a time. The next thing I know, I'm trying to head outside to help Alan put some stuff away and I FALL OUT THE FRONT DOOR LIKE AN IDIOT... TOTALLY sprain my ankle, bad! I thought I had broken it, the feeling was similar to when I had fractured my foot before. I was stressing and a hot mess! The poor kids were probably traumatized, seeing me lay there bawling my eyes out!
We had a pretty good experience at the ward we went to with his co-worker. It was Fast and Testimony meeting, so there were some pretty interesting messages shared, but it really strengthened my feelings about the truthfulness of the gospel. Getting through the airport later that night was an interesting experience to say the least, hobbling around. Luckily they had trains to get you to the terminals.
All in all, I was feeling super confused by the time I got home about whether or not we should go to Denver. For about a week and a half I really struggled with it. On the following Tuesday, I was in the throws of an intensive project at work-- headphones on, music blaring, vigorously reviewing numbers-- when a voice suddenly stopped me in my tracks. "You should go to Denver." So we're going! We plan to leave Logan at the end of August or early September. Crazy, bittersweet feelings, but excited about the adventure.
Last but not least, this past week we had Stake Softball. I AM NOT a Softball player, by any stretch of the imagination. I was SICK with anxiety about playing, but I had been encouraged by some amazing members of our ward. I ended up scoring two runs AND catching the last out of the game!!!!!! I was stoked!!!
And that's about it! Sorry about the long post, but thanks for reading! Til next time!
