1st year pics!

here's a couple of the pics from the fabulous deshawna of echophotoworks!!

i told you.. this field is amazing! and when the sun began to set, it made for a perfect autumn skyline! what a gorgeous day to celebrate an amazing relationship :c)

thanks deshawna.. great job!

1 year of blessings

today is our first year anniversary. wow

it's funny to think back on the chaos that was going on this day one year ago, but it's amazing to remember how our love trumped it all. after spending a year of loving each other through the chaos of life, i realize what a true blessing marriage is.

ray, i honestly can't pinpoint the time when you stole my heart, but i know now that it is yours. i love you for the times you make me laugh, and let me cry. i love you for how you support me, and push me. i love it when you hold me tightly, and when you snap your fingers while dancing :c). i love your loud laugh, and your big lips. i love your friendliness, and your compassion. but most of all, i love your unconditional love, and your faith in the Lord.

thank you ray, for living life by my side :c)

ps. to celebrate our 1 year, we went to church, did the final walk through on our house (which we'll be signing for later today!!), did some school work, baked an apple cake, then we took some couple pictures in the field i posted from last wednesday (i'll blog them i soon as i get them!) and had a fabulous dinner at a new asian bar. it wasn't the european trip that i had been planning on a year ago... but it was a beautiful day with the man i love, it was wonderful.

pps. photos by kriea arie, an amazing photographer

ahh.. bubbles again!!

okay, i truly love bubbles. not are they only fun, colorful, and clean.. they make for some amazing pictures! i've been editing the family pictures from yesterday, and i was just too excited at all the bubbles, so i thought i'd share with ya. enjoy~

ps. these are maverick's 4 year old pics,

and his sister fallon was playing with us :c)

an 'awe' moment

tonight i had awww and awe all mixed in one!

i went to a family's house to take family pictures (yes, i am still taking 'business' pics.. i'll hopefully be blogging all that soon!). anyways, on my way past their house (there was no street sign!) i discovered this beautiful field with broke down cars in it. the field was full of the 'wild weeds' that i'm lovin' right now, and for some reason i have this fetish with old car pictures..

so after the shoot i made my self go back to the field some 'just for me' pics.

as i was there, the sun began to set, which made for an amazing orange backdrop. here's my favorite (no photoshoping~)

this is the torment my fingers went through holding uo my 'stalker lens'

*note the middle finger nail

a weekend at home!

a weekend at home! wow.. it's great to truly appreciate it!

this is my first weekend at home (and not working) since july.. yuck!

so today was able to go to my church (and there was a great sermon, the series is 'your not good enough'.. check it out here). it's been great as we are getting more involved and developing friendships with fellow life churchers. after chruch ray and i decided to enjoy the great outdoors at the kickingbird golf range. i haven't been in about a year, but eventually hit a few decent ones, then i kept entertained with my camera ;c)

yay he hit the ball! (it's better than i can usually do..)

surveying the shot
isn't he a stud?
here's me and my poofy hair..
your chance to judge his form..
now we're at home, he's doing homework, i'm blogging/editing.
but next week at this time we'll be signing for our house!! can't wait!!

sunflowers

i love fall! actually, i love both of the 'in between' seasons, but right now it's fall, so let me fav about it :c) the weather has been soo beautiful here, it makes my days of being inside the hospital even harder! but today i have my first official wedding as the primary shooter (deshawna of echo photo works will be joining me) and it's going to be at the tidal school vineyard, and it looks like a promising fall day! but for now, my friend summer and i have always enjoyed the oklahoma form of sunflowers ever since our high school days when we used one for a prank (a very harmless prank). summer called me the other day just to point out all the beautiful sunflowers, so i decided to capture a few on film. the great thing about where i live right now, there is a sunflower field right across the street from my apartment (which next to the horse farm) but right down the road from the super target and the mall. it's all within 1/2 a mile! here's the sunflowers..

a makeover story

hello all!

a few weeks ago i joined a women's book/bible study on monday nights. my friend, contessa, has been going for awhile and invited me for the next lesson, Calm My Anxious Heart. like i said, this was a few weeks ago, when i was extremely nervous about teaching (which is going great :c), moving, working full time at deaconess, etc, etc.. so calming sounded like the perfect thing! i'm only on chapter 2 of the book, but it continually makes me concentrate on learning to be content and to trust the good Lord.

another great aspect of the study is the wonderful women that i'm surrounded by. they are great, godly mentors and friends. and if there is a need, they work to meet it.

now to the need. contessa in herself is one of the most amazing people i know. besides being a single mom of 4 of the cutest dang kids i know (one with cerebral palsy), she works 3 jobs, volunteers, attends 2 bible studies, feeds her sons & their friends, and has compassion like no other. her most recent undertaking (besides taking in a new little female boxer, which i hope to possibly be relieving her from ;c) is a job as a teacher for autistic children (oh yeah, and she just graduated college last year, while also doing the list above..).

her class consists of about 11 autistic children, from grades K-5. wow! she has a couple that cry all day, some that try to run away, a couple that are good at learning... all in this trailer outside of the school! she asked us for help to create a calm place for the children to have a better learning environment, so our life group gathered all the paint and utensils that we had at home and came together on a monday night to do just that. the color we ended up is called "God's color", a purple tone that was created from everyone's left over paint. thanks to all the women's help, the classroom is clean and organized (partly) with a fresh coat of paint. now if you'll just remember to keep tes and the students in your prayers, for these are still very needy children.

here's our work..

a mess to start with

"God's color"

my man titus, contessa's 3rd child.

the proud teacher in her new classroom!

danin' the night away

blogger friends, meet kacey and summer

kacey is my younger sister & summer is my close-enough-of-a-friend-to-be-a-sister!

kacey and summer both like to dance

they are both good at dancing,

but their dancing faces are much more entertaining than their dancing!

here's kacey and summer breakin' it down at LAX in Vegas

(and crackin' me up!)

this is a picture from my *wedding that pretty much put summer on the map for face making

and while we posting dancing faces pics, here's my high school friend jessica having a blast with her now fiance at my *wedding!

*pictures from my wedding courtesy of Art by Kriea, an amazing photographer and inspiration to me :c)

and to be fair to all, here's the 4 of us dancin' the night away in vegas!
and since we're on the subject of dancing.. tonight i will be learning a special kind of dance that only my hubby will ever get to see. it's danna's bach party tonight, and the wedding is next week (which means more wedding pics to come!) wish me luck tonight!

the stacy wedding!

here's (some) pics from my beautiful friend, anndrea's wedding.

besides taking the risk of letting me be prime photographer for the first time ever at her wedding, she was the most care free bride i have ever seen. at one point she told me "i'm having to keep everyone else calm"! i was definitely more nervous than her, but what's there to be nervous about when your marrying the man of your dreams :c) mark is able to keep up with dre's active lifestyle of camping, rock climbing, and anything that involves God's great outdoors. he can also put up with her love for bugs! it was a great wedding, celebrating a great couple. i hope you enjoy what they put together!