My Day as a Wedding Photographer

My cousin married his lovely girlfriend last Saturday in a ceremony planned in less than 10 days! :-o
They didn't really have a massive budget for a photographer or anything... so... I was it! (err her?). I happily took pictures of their ceremony and after that we went to a park and did some more portraits. On the way over to the reception (which was at my parents' house) we stopped by a beautiful tree-lined street and seized the opportunity for some pictures there as well.

What I can say about wedding photographers... hats off to them, man. Everything goes by so fast, so you really have to be ON your game to capture all the important moments (rings being exchanged, the kiss (especially if it's just a quick peck like they did!), quick little inside smiles to one another...). I was really thrilled that they entrusted me to capture their day, and I'm happy how the pictures are coming along (uhhh I took about 1000 shots, I think I have quite a bit of editing to do!). I gave them a little sneak peek the other day and I wanted to post them here too:

I'm really loving photography. If I must be totally candid with y'all, I maybe (not-so) secretly want to do this professionally, as a career. I'm always full of self-doubt and know that I still have a lot of improving and honing of my skills before that day could possibly come, but it's my little secret wish that I thought I'd let out. Maybe one day...

An Update

I went in yesterday for my biopsy. The nice lady did an ultrasound on my arm pit for about 10 minutes, looking thoroughly and digging deeply to get the best look in there. She then left the room to get the radiologist, while I laid there, anxiously awaiting what was about to happen. I looked over at the screen and saw this:

Well now I'm no expert by any means, but those two things there on the left looked scary to me. I held my breath until the dr. came into the room... and with a smile said everything looked absolutely normal!


Whew! I can't begin to tell you the relief I feel. I immediately hugged my dear friend who came with me and called hubby up in (happy) tears to tell him the news. I feel so lucky and blessed right now that I don't have to travel back down that road again. Last night we celebrated with yummy cupcakes. Life (and health) should never, ever be taken for granted.

14 Months Old

My little love is 14 months old now! Before I know it she'll be old enough where it'll be silly to count by the months. I always thought it was ridiculous when people would say their kid was 21 months old... why not just say almost 2? Now I totally get it. They're so different each month. Always learning, always developing. She's accomplished so much since last month:

• Kicked the bottle to the curb! Now we're doing a full-time sippy situation. It took about 194 different cups, but we found the magic winner: A Pampers brand (who knew?) step 4 sippy cup that I picked up at Vons while grocery shopping. She's taken to it really well so I went back for more and bought the last one they had. I haven't been able to come across these anywhere else, so hopefully I can get my hands on a few more soon. It's not so much fun alternating between two cups vs. the bunches of bottles we had before.
• She's got some new words: duck and uck (yuck). I think she's a little confused by uck, because she uses it even when she likes something (like dinner). Silly goose - er duck. :-) She says up when she wants up and also when she wants to be put back down. Oh! And today (though it should count for next month's post technically) she did something super awesome. We were reading "That's Not My Pirate" and we were on the page that said his eye patch was too bumpy. So she repeated "bump". We were thrilled by this, so when we finished the book we asked her where the bumpy pirate was. She opened the book and turned to the page with that pirate and said "The bump." She also says "Wha's da?" Those are two words together, people. Someone call Harvard, stat.
• She's got 11 teeth now. Last month was a definite tooth boom. 3 of them molars, no less. And she did pretty well considering! So 6 on top and 5 on the bottom, if you're counting.
• She nods her head yes by bowing her whole body forward. It's awesome.
• Sleeping through the night consistently. It's awesome.
• I'm going to be honest and confess that I don't want to take away the pacifiers just yet... because I think she looks so cute and baby-like with them. The pedi said he's not concerned about that at least for another year, and I probably won't let it go that long, but for now, I like giving her the binks for nap and bedtime (really the only times she gets one... or if she's screaming in a restaurant!).
• She wears a size 6 shoe now (5 in sandals) and some 12-18 or 18-24 month clothes. I've started buying jammies in 2T! I have no update on her weight as the monthly dr. appts have slowed to every 3 months now. Next one's at the end of Sept! What I can tell you, is that she weighs a ton!
• Her favorite things are "dancing" to music (Wiggles are her fave, but she'll go for anything really), knocking down block towers, catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror, reading quietly by herself in the corner (she likes alone time periodically), running circles around me, jumping on my back and riding me like a pony (ha!), ravioli and all fruit.
• Speaking of food, she's a great eater! We have had a lot of luck in this department, thankfully. She has her daddy's palette for veggies and fruit.
• She's totally going through a daddy phase right now. I don't like this picking favorites business, but that very well may be because I'm not the one winning. Ah well, it'll be my turn eventually, right? Hubs says it's all in my head, but I suspect he's grinning ear to ear behind my back.
  

Taking pictures of her is now a whole new beast. She runs all over the place, and hardly has time to stop and pose for me like the little model she once was. What happened to my ham?!

Here's what I usually get - the back of her head haha. But at least it shows off all that hair that's coming in! Looks like she's getting my curls!

Well...

I'll have Gabriella's 14 month update soon, but I wanted to write a little about what's going on with me right now.

I had a pet scan a little while ago and the results weren't quite perfect. It appeared to show some increased activity in my right underarm, and while my dr. tried to not seem too concerned about it, he did want to get it checked into on a more thorough level. He felt around and while he couldn't feel anything, the scan is showing measurements of 1.8 (anything over 2 and they worry). He thinks it could be from my arthritis throwing things off, but again, wants to look into it more carefully to make sure we're not looking at iwonttypetheword here.

So, I have a biopsy on Tuesday.

I really hate that word, since it sounds so serious and all, but it is what it is. I'm trying to remain as optimistic as possible, because I really don't want to think about all the what ifs of going through this all over again. Any time I think about it I just look at my sweet baby girl and she somehow makes it all better. I could never imagine leaving her behind (one of the godawful whatifs that crosses my mind), and the thought of that just destroys me. So I've decided that I'm OK. :-) I'll have to wait about 4 days after Tuesday to be really sure of that, but for now, I'm OK.

Like Riding a Bicycle

I mentioned in my last post that we took a little getaway to Huntington Beach. We really just went for one night since my mom's work had her at a conference down there. We brought Gabby and decided to take full advantage of the free room and pool :-)

Naturally I brought my camera with us, but I just didn't feel like taking pictures*. I wanted to run around like a kid, so we did. We played poolside, and ran around the resort after G. On a whim we decided to rent bicycles, one with a little tow-thingy for babies. I... uhhh... have never ridden a bike without training wheels before. I know, right!? What kind of childhood did I have? A great one! I stayed indoors and read books. So Adam was a little nervous about me getting on a bike and riding around the boardwalk. Probably not nervous that I'd go flying over the handlebars; more like "This is going to be a royal waste of money because you can't ride a bike".

Whatever hubs. I can ride a bike. It's like riding a bicycle.

Wait.

And in action:

See!? I was a total pro. Now I *totally* need a bike.

Here's my girl getting ready to go for a ride:

Note how totally safe I was by wearing a helmet, and how Adam thinks it's totally cool to live on the edge and not. Not cool, man!

And one more pic of Geebs prancing around the resort:

*iPhone pictures don't count. So I really was taking a break from the camera. Technically. :-)

Is this thing on?

Well it has recently been called to my attention that I have neglected my blog. Sometimes you just need a little hiatus, so I took one... err I should say we took one. We ventured out to the beach last week for a little more fun in the sun. Actually it should be quite shameful on my part for not posting more, because our weekends have been JAM packed since July, and we're booked right through the end of August! We even had a little weekend getaway at the Hyatt Huntington Beach a few weekends ago, and I hardly took any pictures there. I guess it's not a real getaway if I'm always behind a lens - even though I love my hobby, I need to remember to live in the moment sometimes too! Maybe I'll rustle up some iphone pictures of me riding a bike for the first time - I'm sure that'll tickle someone. In the meantime here's us at the beach - and by us I mean Geebs and hubbs. Why am I never in pictures? Oh yeah...

She caught wind of this little boy and it was love at first sight. So she chased him.

Gotcha!

These photos are so insanely vibrant and they're pretty much SOOC (straight out of camera).

Ick, why doesn't the seaweed stuff gross her out?! I guess babies don't gross out lol.

Back to the little boy...

Love at first sight I tell ya. I think I need to teach her about playing hard to get.