Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Happy First Birthday Leo!

I've "known" Leo since his parents announced at my house on Thanksgiving 2010 that they were pregnant.  It was so fun being able to go to his 1st birthday party!!




He is one of the happiest babies that I have ever met.  I love that he is full of smiles and giggles.

Aaron and I both don't have a whole lot of family in the area and so it is really nice to be included in other people's family events.  And lucky for us, Dee was friends with the Harnish's first so it is like a real family get together since Aaron's sister is there.

Happy Birthday Leo!!!!  You are more fun every day (too bad he can't read this yet)!

Monday, May 28, 2012

"Business Trip"

I headed down for Provo on Sunday the 20th.  Aaron was suppose to be going on a business trip and so I had planned a photo shoot to keep me busy all week.  Aaron didn't end up going on a business trip that week because he hadn't finished getting all of his security clearance figured out for his new job.  What was I to do?  Cancel the shoot that I'd been planning for a couple months?  Nope.

I spent a week down in Provo while Aaron was up in Ogden all by himself.  He had work to keep him busy for nearly half the day so I don't think he had time to miss me too terribly.  But I guess you could say that I was the one on a business trip...since this trip was for my business.

On Sunday I took pictures of two of the girls.  They were twins so it might look like just one to you but look at their hair length if you can't see any other differences.






I've been working on those sets for awhile and it was amazing to finally get some use out of them.  Seeing my vision come to life!!!

If you want to see more of these go to Candid Joy Photography on Facebook and I would be honored if you "like" the page.

Anyway, Monday I sat at Clarise's place working on photos from Sunday until Andy came over.  Him and I went on a walk together to the library to drop off a book and get some Slurpees.

Photo Credit: Andy Foree
We ended up getting locked out of Clarise's place since we didn't want their stuff to get stolen and we didn't have a key.  But hey, it was shady and a nice day and zero stuff got stolen.  Plus I felt like I was in high school again.  Chilling out in the heat, drinking a slurpee with a really really good friend.  Loved it.

The next day was Tuesday and I had another photo shoot!  Yeah, I had two new models and zero cooperation from the weather at the location.

Yeah, I made this wonderful fabrics kites.  It took me an entire day to finish these.

The wind was INSANE.  When we got to the location, I was stunned that it could be so windy when in the valley there was nothing going on in the way of moving air.  We did a test flight of one of the kites thinking that if it was too windy to blow bubbles, we could fly the kites for sure.

Wrong.  From all of the moving around, a joint of the dowel was weakened.  We threw it up in the air and it immediately exploded.  EXPLODED.  Bits of kite flew everywhere.  I went to go and look at the second one and it also had a weakened spot and I still needed to sew the corner to hold the dowel, well I went to do that and it snapped.  So....I didn't get a single picture posing with those awesome kites, let alone flying them.  ARGGG!!!!

For one model, I had planned chalk and bubbles planned and for the other one, flying my beautiful fabric kites.

 Luckily we had a river nearby to play in and experiment with.  I had planned to use it on Friday for the last shoot but we were a little desperate.  And the chalk still worked in the wind so we made the best of it.




For the bubbles, we had to go to another location entirely and I couldn't get a large shot since....it was in the middle of the city.  That wasn't the look I was going for but I got a couple cute ones.



The best laid plans of mice and men.  I got a couple good photos but not as many as I would have likes.  Especially since I'm staying a week away from my wonderful hubby to get these pictures.

Later that night, Andy and Geoff tried to trick me into going to play practice with them till 10pm since they said Clarise wouldn't be at home till then.  Liars.

Clarise came to get me at 6:30pm and I gladly ran home with her to hang out.  We had fun trying to cook some Paleo food and watching Firefly.  Yes, I finally gave in and started watching Firefly.

Wednesday I spent working on photos till Clarise and Geoff got home.  Clarise and I made Paleo meatballs.  They were pretty yummy.

Then I went to play practice with the guys for reals.  The play they are doing is "Arabian Nights" and it's really fun.  I laughed pretty hard and I just got to see the first half!!

Thursday was spent working on photos and I'm sure something else.  All of the days kind of blend together. I'm sure that Clarise came home and we watched Firefly after trying to make Paleo curry.

Friday was the last set of pictures and guess what?!?  It rained in the morning and was threatening to rain the rest of the day.  I ended up canceling with the model and Clarise and I went up into the mountains to play around.  We wanted to get some good pictures but we didn't care since by this time, I felt like the photo shoot was cursed.

But you know what?  It turned out pretty wonderful.  Plus for the first time ever, I got to be a model in my own photo shoot.




That night Aaron came to pick me up!  I was suppose to go up Saturday with his sister but he came down to get me because he loves me and he wanted to see me as soon as possible.

He took me to City Creek!  I had walked through it once when we went to a wedding at Temple Square because we parked under it but it was really cool to take the time to walk around.  I don't think that I would ever buy something from there because I'm way too cheap but it is a beautiful shopping center.






That was my "business trip" week away.  And on the 30th, I'm ditching Aaron at home again for Texas.

Monday, May 14, 2012

Summer Camp Out: Indian Trail

Aaron and I have gone on tons of hikes about a mile and a half in on the Indian Trail.  We have seen tons of camping sites starting a half a mile into the trail and we thought that it would be so much fun to head up there for a camping trip.

On Friday, I got dropped off with some of our stuff at 5 o'clock to find a camping site and guard it since this camp was first come, first served.  I tried to light a fire for awhile but I was the worst at it.  I had one going for a little while but I needed to get bigger pieces of wood to take care of it.  Luckily I had the dogs with me to hang out and keep me company.  They loved wandering around the camp site sniffing as much as they could.

I hung this squeaker monkey in a tree nearby.  That way if they got too far from camp, I could squeeze it and they would come running back to camp.
(photo by Andy's iphone)
Anyway, at 8 o'clock everyone was in the camp grounds!  We set up our tents, got a fire going, made s'mores and drank hot chocolate and talked about different things.
Aaron, Clarise and I went to sleep pretty early at 10:30pm.  It had been a long day and we were pretty tired.  Andy and Geoff stayed up to keep playing with the fire.  It took me awhile to fall asleep since I had too much hot chocolate to drink, I needed to pee at about 11:30pm.  That was when some random loud hippies wandered into our camp.  I guess that they had been planning to camp in our spot but didn't show up till 11:30. I showed them where another trail head was to another camp site near by.   I was really tired and out of it and didn't really remember much of it the next morning.

There were about 5 of them and they were waiting for more friends.  So as you can imagine...they were a little loud.  The only person that they kept up was Andy...because he has crazy good hearing and his tent was particularly cold.

The next morning, we all woke up at about 8 o'clock.  Time for breakfast!!  That was a series of unfortunate events.

First of all, Andy and Geoff burned through all of the wood we had the night before trying to prove how manly they were.  So they needed to go hunting for more wood.  And we had to get creative with the chopping of the wood.

Geoff shoved this wood into a cement hole near by and hopped up and down on this difficult piece.  It didn't work.  We had to move onto other methods.

Geoff found a really sharp rock and tried to use that to cut the log in half.  It sounds crazy.

 But it did start to work.  The problem was that it was taking WAY too long.

So he propped it up and had Andy hold it down...then he threw a rock at it.  Humans are very highly evolved.  We know how to use tools.

Well, after about the 5th hit, it snapped the tree in half.  We are totally as awesome as Bear Grylls!

 Look at this strong man face!!

Back to breakfast!  Clarise and I were put in charge of cooking.  I brought some awesome pancake batter to make these wonderful Hawaiian pancakes.  Well....the propane stove's lowest setting would immediately burn the batter onto it.  I couldn't scrap it off!  Aaron told me to cook the bacon first so that the grease would keep the pancake from sticking.

The bacon turned out great!  There really wasn't a way for me to ruin it.  The boys gobbled it up!
(Photo by Andy)
Then Geoff tried to make some bacon...look at what he did!!  I didn't think that you could mess up bacon....but you can count on Geoff to start a grease fire!
(Photo by Andy)
Aaron made some eggs for everyone.  Or rather...he put the eggs in the pan and gave it to me to cook up.  We had to eat it with our hands.  I wrapped some eggs in bacon and ate it that way.  Like a boss.  I tried cooking the rest of the pancakes but I burned every single one.  I ended up being the only person who would eat them...oh well...more for me.

Look how happy we were after breakfast!
(Photo by Andy)
Once we were full, it was time to get the camp site ready for the rest of the day.  Here is Aaron doing the manliest job!!  Washing the dishes!!  He was such a good sport.  Since I worked so hard burning  making breakfast, he washed most of the dishes (I might have helped a little with that too...but he did the most).

Bambi got sent to "her room" since she decided that she deserved some scrambled eggs.  She did NOT deserve scrambled eggs.  She had already received breakfast.

Oh...then this happened.  Aren't these two perfect for each other?

Oh...then we found a dead snake in the "watering hole" nearby.  We could only see part of the snake and we were debating on whether or not it was a bungee cord.

Then we threw it into our dying fire so that it wouldn't rot in the water...we are so considerate of other animals feelings.

Oh...and then we spent some time goofing off.

T-Rex arms!!!!!  He can't even reach his face with those arms!

Tree dancing!  He is like a little wood nymph.  Except...not little.

The dogs watched on in disgust.

After our shenanigans, Aaron, Andy and I walked the mile to and from camp to drop off half of our camping gear so that we would be carrying less in the evening when we left.  Clarise and Geoff had stayed at camp making all of us our lunches and other food provisions.

Then when we got back to camp we started on our hike.  Before we even started, we saw these boys with their dad hiking up and they were digging around near the watering hole where we found the dead snake.  While on a break later, this same group passed up by and look what one of the boys was holding.

The whole hike we were seeing snakes all over the place.  They were all the same kind of snake that this boy had found so we weren't worried.  But I wasn't about to let Pippen run off and chase them like he wanted.

There were beautiful things to see while we hiked.  All kinds of different colored flowers.  It kind of made me wish that I had lugged my 7D up here with us.


We paused for a picture at what we thought was Nevada Viewpoint....even though we couldn't see Nevada and we were clearly in denial about how far we had hiked.

Please ignore my cleavage.  It was a little ridiculous for a couple weeks.

We walked passed a couple areas that we thought was "Rock Slide Point" but when we got to this area, we were pretty sure that it was Rock Slide Point.  And so we had lunch there.  Beautiful spot for lunch, right?

It was a little more than one mile from our camp....we felt like pansies when we found out that we really hadn't gone that far.

After lunch we decided to throw rocks at other bigger rocks further down.  Don't worry, there wasn't anything for us to make worse.  We could see the bottom of where we were throwing rocks and there wasn't a trail or anything.


After the fun of throwing rocks, we headed back.  It was amazing how quickly you get back when you are going downhill the whole way.

But we were dead tired when we got back to camp.  Luckily we were by some running water which was the perfect thing for our feet.


Geoff decided that he wanted his whole body to be in the icy cold water.

Look at this crazy polar bear.  Seriously this water was frigid....like melted snow frigid...because it was probably melted snow.



Then we settled in by the fire and made tin foil dinners (by Clarise!!) full of yummy veggies!  Then Clarise pulled out some apples and taught us how to roast them and make them taste like apple pie on a stick!

And after this, Andy, Aaron and I packed up the rest of our things and left Clarise and Geoff in the woods.  They were the only ones who wanted to camp both nights.

But a crazy drunk man (and some friends) wandered into their camp site at 1:30am with a knife and was acting insane.  So they hiked the half mile out of the camp back to the car and drove back to our place in Ogden.  I was pretty surprised to find them on the door step at 2:30 in the morning.  But we got to hang out with them all Sunday which was nice.