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The moments inbetween

This picture was taken at Tammy and Leon's wedding.  I took it more for myself than for them. LOL!  Below is a picture of Naomi, her husband was at a wedding I shot last year, and he came up to me after the ceremony and said "I was watching you work.  Half the pictures you take are for yourself, aren't they?  You were aiming your camera at the ceiling and windows, pipe organ, etc.--you're are just having fun ,aren't you?" At first I was embarrassed, but looking back I see it as a compliment--I LOVE WHAT I DO and I pray my clients see that.  Even if it is a church I have shot weddings in multiple times, I ask the Lord "Okay, what do you want me to see for them?" And then He spoils me and points out things for me as well.  I say it to Steve over and over again as I edit pictures "Look, Babe, look what God gave me!" 

I have gotten requests from people to see my weddings and I have always thought I would do a separate photoblog.  I bought a wordpress blog a few years ago, but I have been waiting for the logo and text and everything to be perfect.  I felt like my clients should have a nice, crisp showcase for their images.  But here is the thing...none of it is perfect, it will never be "professional enough" and some of my favorite weddings came from people I have met through this blog.  I cannot be with my kids the amount I want to and maintain a professional "image" with a separate blog. So I am hoping to start posting more weddings on this messy, bad grammar, sporadic, blog, because I want to share that side of my life with you as well, instead of holding back and waiting for perfection.

There is a part of me that holds back because these photos are my babies, and I at times feel like protecting them in case people do not love them the way I do, but the truth is, I believe--I really believe--God gives me the ideas for each image.  They are gifts from God to the couple, and who am I to claim them?  Every year I write out a mission statement for my business and most often it comes back to something like this:

"The aim and final end of music (photographs) should be nothing other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul"--Bach

I translate that to mean I want to bring glory to God and bless those (refresh those) that I come in contact with

So all that to say: I often, at almost every wedding, have tears running down my cheeks in gratitude for what the Lord allows me to capture.  I see His beauty everywhere, and I am so blessed.

My friend Naomi and her son. They go to our small group.  She is due in a few weeks with her third baby.  The last two will be approximately eleven months apart!  Naomi is an MK from France so she has that calm, world wise maturity about her.

Okay, so Jim does not get points for being classy...but romantic, yes.  It made us smile and take a drive-by photo, so thumbs up for Jim.

I was FINALLY able to grab an hour and spend time with my friend Sherrie.  Just as I was leaving her house she showed me her "stones from a river box" (Joshua 4...she has a cooler name for it, but it escapes me now).  She takes a permanent marker and writes on the stones things that God has done.  Under the bowl of stones is potpourri.  Steve and I have wanted to have something like this in our living room for a long time, filled with receipts and letters etc.--tangible reminders of all His great works in our lives.

Here is Etienne and his cousin who I call Nate the Great.  They went to a local nursing home with their class to sing to the residents there.  There was one resident who was clapping very loudly through the entire performance and when one of the nurses softly asked her to stop she was resolute "No! I will not stop!  I know all about children: they like clapping--it makes them happy and lets them know that they are doing a good job!" And then she just went right on clapping.  Eti kept looking over at her smiling, I think he was on her side.

My new Birks...they took about a week to break in and now I do not know how I ever wore anything else. I have been pricing them for over a year and found my exact size marked waaaaaay down.

I took Juls' kids and my kids down to the creek.  They spent their time building dams and catching crawdads.  At one point Ali and I were sitting on a rock and a very large black snake slithered right between us. How about that?!

My sister Julie told me on the phone "Jo something is wrong with your pictures, xanga is only loading them halfway. "What do you mean?" I inquired, "Well like the one at the creek, Nate is all chopped off and you can't see what the girls are doing!"  I laughed and laughed and then responded , "No Julie that IS the picture!"

Excuse #1  My memories of childhood are like this; blurry, dappled in sunlight, not revealing every detail or even all the faces of who is there.  It is usually more a feeling, a hint of a moment, a playful mystery  -you know there is something going on but you can't quite grasp it, it has moved beyond the frame of your memory.

Excuse #2  I shot most of the pictures on this post with my little point and shoot Panasonic Lumix, which does not have a viewfinder like an SLR that I can put right up to my eye so instead I am waving it all over the place at arms length hoping to capture something and this is what it gave me.

You, the reader can choose which excuse you like best but may I suggest excuse #1?  It is more artsy and I worked harder at coming up with it.

The girls discovered rocks can be used like chalk and every few minutes brought me gifts of scratched rocks and foliage.

"I feel it is important to remember that there is beauty in every situation. And it is the imperfect moments of life that have the most value.  They are the ones that shape who we are and years from now they are the ones that we remember.  Photograph and enjoy the moments in between. "

                                                                                                         ----Carlos Tarrats

My boys are spending most of their days outside.  Steve is letting them use hammer, nails, and a hand saw.  This is a first.  From the time they were born, I have let Steve make the call with the boys.  I have no clue what is too scary or dangerous and just let him decide what is okay.  The boys love it and I paid them 2 dollars to make me a stand for my headbands.  They had to paint it as well, and it came out so good!

I love this picture above because it looks like something Coco did: it is outside of the bounds. I have so many pictures like this on my hard drive where my kids will ask me to take pictures, and then they break every single rule of photography.  I keep them because as they get older, they will start to discover the boundaries, and I will show them these shots. Half the time I suspect that it is not the kids being creative, but more about my camera being very heavy and they are just happy to press the shutter and not drop it at the same time!

Wegmans.  Came home with ingredients for all the recipes I picked out of my Tessa Kiros cookbook as well as the Real Simple magazine cookbook which has SO MANY great recipes in it.

Chicken curry, gyros, roasted garlic potato soup, angel hair pasta with zucchini and feta, baked fish with roasted red potatoes...

Steam

Memorial Day parade.

Had to explain to the kids why we teared up everytime we said thank you to a veteran who passed by.

Each one represented our Grandfathers' generation  (WW2) or my Fathers' generation (Vietnam and The War on Terror) .

I keep thinking that the kids need to talk to more of the World War 2 vets who will not be living anymore by the time the kids are old enough to realize what they had missed.

I have a memory, but it right on the fringes, and when I try to retrieve exact details I lose it altogether.  It is of my dad and all six of us kids walking behind buildings and warehouses and coming to a strip of land covered in weeds and deserted old box cars and trains.  I remember standing before some of the old steam giants and my father talking about how much even one wheel would weigh.  It felt like an adventure because we had to walk about ten blocks to get there and the railyard was so abandoned.  I could sense that my dad admired the engines and it has stayed with me.  Years later they restored the train yard,  and we often bring the children to see the trains.   I have also done numerous photoshoots here.  We decided on a whim to go to the train yard (I love Steve's whims, I usually say yes before he even finishes, because his whims are always so perfect...

Do you want to go on a bike...YES!

Do you want to go chase some fireworks and see if we can find them...Yes

Do you want to take an old US route instead of the Interstate...Yes!)

This time we also went into the museum and it was perfect timing because one of the steam trains was just then coming  into the round house.

Inside the museum they have so many displays and photographs, I usually make a beeline to the hobo section, where they have signs the hobos would paint on walls and fences to tell other travellers about the place.  The lady who worked at the museum said that an elderly man came to visit and said that he remebered going to his Grandmothers as a child and she always had a cat drawn on her fence and he had not known what it meant until many years later, that it meant "Kind older lady lives inside".

I have three keys on my key chain, one is my house key, the other to the Honda and the third is a key like the one above that was the original key to the house I grew up in.  After the lock broke for good my father put in a modern lock.

Portrait of our family.  Chloe at any minute is going to say something about Eti's hand in her face, and Eti will cock his head and give me his super cute charm to try to distract me. And there are my other boys behind me most likely talking about the history of trains.  Jeff will come to me shortly and tell me some encylcopedic fact that his father told him.

Ring pops from the parade.

Power blogging

Timing myself and setting a limit on how much I can write per photo..on your marks, get set...

My sister Janet graduated, one point away from a 4.0 average, incredible.

Janet leaned over to my mom later in the day and said "Hey mom your little homeschool girl just graduated with her masters!" And then Janet did a little dance.

Janet and her very best friend Abby.

My friend Rachael. She is adopting a little boy from Ethiopia and her family and friends put together a shower for her.  Rachael and Jon are going to be amazing parents,  AMAZING!

Soup

I asked them for one thing on Mother's day, one picture of them with me, just one, even if it came out blurry, or poor lighting, just one to remember them on this day..how can they be this big already?

I caught Etienne walking in circles around the yard listening to the ocean, with a mouth full of sunflower seeds.   I asked him why he was not smiling back at me ( I though something was wrong because he is always so smiley), so he did smile and then a few seeds fell out.  I won't even ask next time.

My Mother's day gift from Steve was a gift card and four and a half hours alone in Borders!   I walked out of there so gorged on inspiration, I could hardly walk!  I spent my card on this precious cook book written by Tessa Kiros, she writes cookbooks the way I want them written, it is like she knows me and sat down to make this cookbook JUST FOR ME.  Juls bought me her other cookbook and now I get to flip through them and pick out recipes while I eat breakfast in the mornings!

During the rush to get ready for church, their was a cloud of whispers coming from the living room, all three kids were laying on the floor with their heads hovering over a piece of paper, when I walked by they all put their hands on the paper and smiled at me, when I was out of the room the whispering resumed, this went on every time I walked past, and then right before we left they handed me my little notebook filled with their kind thoughts.

The sisters took my Mom out to the Olive Garden, Left to right on the conservative side of the table, Myself, Julie, and Martha.

Not so conservative side of the table, Janet, my Mom, and Renay.

I went to the rehearsal for a wedding I was shooting and arrived early enough to stop at a small park, I rolled the window down so that I could hear my Favorite Crowder song playing and stood under this Lilac tree to pray for my bride and Groom and for the upcoming wedding.  The wind was blowing the blossoms back and forth and sending its perfume down, everything is in bloom right now.

 Steve and I drove to Philly for an appointment with our homestudy provider, some parts of Philly have row houses where the owner will paint only their side of the house.  Steve and I were thinking of verses and sermon illustrations to go along with this image.

Okay time's up....you should see the list of things I have to accomplish today!

Just got back from a wonderful, MUCH needed weekend away with my Steve.  Thank you for the kind messages that I found waiting from some of you, it is so lovely to be missed...a gift really.

Steve is taking multiple college classes to finish up his degree and is filling up his days with 10 hours or more of studying and reading.

My wedding season started two weeks ago

We are in the middle of a homestudy

My head is spinning

But it is all good

"Looking back I would have enjoyed the process more."  (A good friend from church who has been a missionary for many years said this to me after I told her what  I was feeling as we step out in faith)  I am really trying to enjoy it all, but panic and discouragement are also options that keep popping up!

She also said  "Celebrate it!  Walk right into it, and say I am going to walk by faith and have a wonderful time with this!"

I have so many wonderful images God has given to me and I am hoping to find the time to share them soon!

Someday

Steve spoke for chapel at the boys' school.  He spoke about David and Goliath (1 Samuel 17) above is the life sized drawing he made.

The parts I liked the most was where Steve pointed out that David did not only have five smooth stones, a shepherd's bag, and a sling (vs 40) but he said to Goliath that he came in the name of the Lord (vs 45)

Also, and I love this image that I have somehow missed in Sunday school, Christian school, years of church, and reading the Bible on my own.... "David RAN toward Goliath" (VS 48)

My sister Juls and her husband went away overnight and we had their kids (Nate and Ally).   I don't think Chloe or Ally took the "princess" get-up off even once!  Ally came in the door when she first saw Chloe and asked "Can I call her my sister while I am here?"

I asked my Great Aunt what was her favorite memory of her mother and she said "The way her face would light up when I would bring her a flower, she would respond as though it was the most precious gift."  I think of that now as my kids bring me backyard finds..it is an opportunity to give them a pleasant memory that might last a lifetime.

I have a vase that I bought years ago, it sits on my stove and every time they bring me little treasures I put them on display in this vase, the kids come over and peer up at the vase to see how the flowers are doing and to see if they need to restock it.

A few years ago I went to Los Angeles and toured the city with my Aunt and she took me out to a fantastic Japanese restaurant where I had Edamame for the first time.  They are cold, salty, crunchy soy beans.  I wish Steve did not know they were soy beans.  When I found them in Wegmans I was all excited to introduce the family to this great snack but Steve is anti-anything-made-with-soy, not so much for taste as for what it stands for in his mind (tree hugger, save the whales, make love not war,  don't eat meat try soy instead).  So in the end everyone tried, I don't think I will be buying it again, but at least I tried, and look how pretty they are.

We spent the day at a local park, walking through a pine forest, catching views of waterfalls, playing in the playground, watching the kids run off ahead of us.  I have been so busy looking looking looking at all the blossoms, it really seems like every little thing is in bloom, it is such a wonderful time to be alive and to have all my senses.

There are not many people in the world that I love like I do  my sisters, Janet has been so very busy with work and going to Grad school.  I was spoiled this week with how much time I was able to spend with her.  We went on a road trip together to see my friend Jenean perform her recital.  Jenean sang in Italian, French, and German and I cried in English because the words were printed out and the emotion she brought out in each song could be understood.  I day dreamed of floating down in a boat in Italy, looking up at the clouds and hearing her voice singing off in the distance.

I was getting my things out of the van and there my family was in the window having devotions.  Coco is caught red handed picking at her nails.  She is not allowed to have her Saturday tradition of painting nails with me until she lets her nails grow a little.  I really wish she would just stop and let them grow because it punishes me as well, I miss how she lines all the colors up and takes forever to decide (usually pastel glitter), and then hearing her as she turns the bottles into Mommies and Daddies and little children.

Sisters day (Julie, Janet and myself)

Eti's offering.  There is a patch of purple flowers int he yard and Eti didn't think it was fair that the purple got all the attention so he brought some dandelions over to join them.

"Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again."  C. S. Lewis

This is the little fairy house Chloe and I made tucked into an old stone wall on our property.

We invited my brother Joel and Renay over for a cookout.  Below is their daughter Angelina, who is five, loves her blanky, and looks just exactly like her daddy.