A Bakersfield Graduation

    This weekend we went to Bakersfield to celebrate Aaron's cousin's wife's graduation from High School.  Ashley is quite possibly one of the most amazing people that I know! In this last year of high school she has gone through a traumatic loss of her little boy at 9 months pregnant, just a few short days before her due date. My brain cannot fathom the possible emotional pain that she has been through. Seeing the way she has dealt with this, not only makes me have a greater respect for her but makes me look up to her.

    A few days after her loss, Ashley and Aaron's cousin, Caleb, made it official and got married.  All of this, of course, happened during winter break.  Knowing that her due date fell during that time, she had planned to go into independent studies and finish out her school year there. When it came time for school to start again, she pulled (what I figure took everything she had) together and went back into her regular classes. NOT ONLY did she go back to school but she also passed all of her classes with flying colors. AND got a "Best in Class Award" for her photography class. In the end, after EVERYTHING, she walked up and grabbed her diploma with a smile on her face. If this isn't the definition of amazing, I don't know what is. I absolutely love that girl, I am so glad - no, HONORED to be able to call her family and, better yet, friend.

Congratulations Ashley!!

    I kind of went off on a tangent there, but I couldn't help it. On our way back home today, we passed by the same ol' shack we do every single time we go and come back from Bakersfield. I have forever wanted to do a photoshoot at this place, but I don't know who owns it. NOW, I could...hop the fence and take pictures and in a rickity, falling down, old house....WAIT! I think I just had deja vu! :)

    When I was in high school we had to do an occupational shoot for my graphic design class.  Since there was a rickity, half burned down, old house (there's that deja vu), I decided to do fire fighting. Lucky for me, my boyfriend at the time had a fire suit and helmet lying around his house and was willing to be my model. We drove to the house, stepped over the broken down fence and went inside. The pictures turned out AMAZING! The last time I was in my old teachers class, the picture was still up on his wall. We all packed up and went out to dinner to celebrate a successful shoot. During dinner I got a phone call from my mom that I needed to get my keester home immediately.  I jumped in my truck and drove home, only to find 6 cop cars at my parents house! I thought for sure that something really bad had happened. Turns out Brawley was just a typical small town Someone had got my licence plate number and was turning me in for burglary! The owner of the house had been contacted and was willing to press charges due to a recent string of thefts. I kindly explained to the 3000 cops in my front yard that the only thing I TOOK was some pictures and that if they wanted them...I would give them the memory cards, I would even stomp the cards right there in the driveway if all of this would go away. Once they realized that this 5'3 105lb (at that time, not now :() girl was not the culprit to whatever thieving was going on, the cops had a little pow wow and 5 of the 6 cars left. Of course, the only guy left was the scariest one, who seemed to stare right into my soul. He sat me down and very politely explained to me that when I stepped over that fallen fence I was trespassing on to someone else property without their permission. They had previously talked to the owner and he said that with all the trauma he had been through with his home burning to the ground, that he was only willing to press charges IF I was the thief. Since I wasn't the cops let me go with a warning. But I learned a few things that day:

1) My mom is SCARY when there are 6 cop cars parked in her front yard

2) You seem to need to have a split personality to be a cop. They magically go from raging mad to sweet old men.

3) Trespassing is a BIG no no...even if you are innocently taking pictures

My teacher ALSO uses that picture in his powerpoint presentation on the first day of class for all the newbies in the "what not to do" part of his shpeel. Thanks Mr. Archer!

    SO everytime we pass this little shack that seems like it is progressively falling down, I am tempted to hop the fence and go take pictures around it. Then I get slapped back to reality by the look on my mom's face when I pulled up to the house that night and think better of hopping over the measly barbed wire fence.  Today, however, was different while we drove. For once we weren't in a hurry to get back home. Both Aaron and I were tired and both not quite ready to leave Bakersfield. We had left early enough to make it home before it was dark if we drove 45 mph the whole way. When we got close to the house Aaron looked over at me and asked how the lighting was...it was perfect of course!  So he pulled over and let me take some pictures of this little shack while all of the traffic and crazy people passed us. He totally made my day and didn't even know it!!

     Since I've written so much and it's late, I will only post one. If you want to see some more, they are on my professional blog.

P.S. I did these from this side of the fence...this is a 100% legal picture

untitled...because my brain can't handle coming up with one

    As Emily gets closer and closer to her two's I find it harder and harder to get on here. I try to get on during the day when my husband isn't home so that I can spend time with him when he is here. With her being more of a sweet loving HANDFUL it's harder to get time to myself...I think I'm going to start making naptime, "mommy's blog time".  

    This last weekend I got to go to Pine Mountain to visit and meet Aaron's grand-aunt, uncle, and cousins. We had a great time up there. I got some more pictures of Aaron's aunts bulldogs (those will be on my photography blog) and some senior pictures of Aaron's cousin's wife (those too will be on my photography blog soon). I had so much fun with Ashley, she's SEEMS so shy but in front of a camera she is AMAZING. The was tossing her hair and kicking out her hip...like she was a world renown model in her last life. In 10 minutes I got 300 pictures, all different and ALL amazing...not only is she an amazing in front of a camera, rumor has it she's not too shabby behind one either. 

     Monday after we came home Emily came to me saying "i wan dat" over and over again. I told her I didn't understand what she wanted since she was aimlessly pointing down the hallway and told her to show me...she confirmed my worse fear by dragging me into the bathroom and showing me the toilet. I inched closer and closer fearing that I was going to find my phone or ipod bubbling at the bottom. I was wrong...it was empty. I looked at her and said "what do you want Emily" and she pulled on her diaper and acted like she was going to crawl up! I took this as my sign...READY SET POTTY TRAINING HAS BEGUN! I took off her diaper and she sat there proud of herself...she didn't do anything but boy was she proud to be up there. I put regular "chonies" on her and was prepared to start the real deal. I put her up on the toilet every 30 minutes and FINALLY it paid off! She went! I made a huge deal and gave her candy...It's been 4 1/2 days now and she averages about one accident a day. Lucky for me the accident doesn't go unnoticed...she knows what she as done as soon as it happens and she runs to the potty to go the rest of the way. I'm pretty sure that this is it!! My baby girl is on her way to being potty trained! :) No more HORRIBLE (I've said before that my daughter's odor is by far the worst I have ever come across) diapers!!

     So with that said, I have spent every 15-30 minutes of my last days few days in the bathroom with little time to blog. From now on I'm utilizing my nap times :)

     I also took these pictures today, I thought that they were SOOOOO cute. Emily was, of course, being super quiet and this is what I walked into my livingroom to find. Plus, after spending one of those free days on the phone with someone from Adobe, who I had a VERY hard time understanding, I FINALLY got my program I've been waiting so long for, I needed something to play with. So I played around with these . the one of her peeking over the camera is going in my portfolio!

Secret spy

    HAHAHA! oh my. I laughed for a while at this picture. My best friend from the valley, Kaylee, also went on both of the missions trips with me. In Nicaragua she found herself in the eye section because she had too big of a heart to yank on peoples teeth and checking someones eyes didn't inflict any pain...Now, I've never really talked to Kaylee about all of this so hopefully I'm close to right in telling this story. I guess I will say that this is the story from MY point of view instead. 

     SO Kaylee worked in the eyes with Bill and Grace, and the first year, Chris. At the time I could read my Kaylee like a book and I was pretty convinced she had a "crush" on him. I didn't know Chris at all but if I had to guess I would say that the feeling was mutual. With both of them working in the eyes right under Graces nose, I don't know if Kaylee ever got the feeling of being watched like I did. Turns out Chris had put aside his interest in Kaylee after he read a note from some girl back home that was a family friend.  They knew eachother since the day they were born, and she was finally admitting her love for him....at the time it was "blah blah blah" to me. NOW that I know it was Jessie, my best friend and his wife now, it's a much more interesting story to me, and just proof that God puts people in your lives at a certain time for a certain reason.

     I think for the first time I'm rambling; I still haven't got to the point of the picture.  So when Panama came around, Kaylee, of course, found herself in the eyes with Grace again. I remember having a little bit of a jealously of the relationship that they had together. They would laugh about something and I would try to make my way into the conversation so that I felt "accepted", only to get uprutly stopped in my tracks from one look from Grace. 

**back to reality for a second**I'm telling you that the woman knows everything that's going on: She just called in the middle of me writing this. It's like she KNOWS! okay back to the story:

     So Kaylee read my blog yesterday and dug up this picture for me. It is a picture of Grace video taping us when we were painting up at the tower. The tower was much further than the building that you see in the back and with the naked eye, you couldn't see us very well. So she whips out her video camera to watch is instead! She actually was watching us like a hawk!  Kaylee gave me this picture not knowing if I knew about it or not but thought it would be pretty funny. I actually did know that she had watched us because when she made a Panama video for her church there was footage of that in there. Instead of being upset, I actually enjoyed getting to see it again. That alone time, although COMPLETELY innocent, was when I believe me and Aaron fell in love. We really got to know one another and after that it was like we had known eachother forever.

     I guess I should end this by saying I LOVE GRACE. I've learned that the "look" is just how she looks at people when she's trying to figure out what they are saying...I still get it every once and a while and it does still stop me in my tracks, but I don't take it personally anymore. Grace is an amazing woman. Her heart is kind and her head is strong...She alot of times reminds me alot of my own mom and grandma. She loves me like I am one of her own and because of this I am honored to able to call her "grandma grace" also!

Reminiscing

     Even though I wasn't tagged...I thought I would do one anyway. My friend Jessica did a picture that had a word across it...a word that meant alot to her "Grace". She tagged a couple of people in her blog to do the same and even though I wasn't tagged I thought I would do one anyway. 

     I choose "Forgiven". I thought for a while about a good word to put on there and alot came to mind but one that stuck out in my head was "forgiven" I have been forgiven. Not only by God but by my friends and family and people that I have hurt in my life. I did alot of things in my past that hurt both myself and the poeple that I loved around me and I have been greatly forgiven...because of this I have been able to move on with my life, and find an AMAZING man that I truely believe was put on this world just for me, and even though I sometimes feel like I could smack him with a shovel and burry him in the back yard, I love him completely. Together we have been blessed with an wonderful daughter that we both would be lost without!

     We stayed up until 1:00 in the morning talking about our versions of when we met...I figured I would take this time to write our novel for those of you who don't know it or don't know the whole thing.

      I used to work for a dentist down in the valley. Turns out he was Aaron's grandma's brother in law...so Aarons great uncle.  Dr. Cheatwood has gone on missions trips around the world doing dental work for people in remote villages who need it done. By showing his love to others through selfless work, he hoped that the love of God would shine through him and touch the people of these places. This was our goal and mission for going with him. I had been the year before to Nicaragua and vowed to never be in the dental part of the mission because I didn't think I could stomach it. After successfully pulling my first tooth (yes, someone elses) I fell in love with everything dental and became his right hand woman. 

    We also did eye work down there. People would be seen and tested for glasses and given what they needed in order to see. It was touching to see people who had never been able to read the Bible, pick one up and read it themselves for the first time. Aaron's grandma and grandpa ran the eye section of the medical part. 

     The first year in Nicaragua I met Chris, Aaron's cousin. We all got to know him pretty well but unfortunately he left without giving us any contact information and we were all afraid that we would never get to see him again. So, as we sat and waiting to catch our flight in the airport in San Diego, everyone was hoping to see Chris walk through the doors with Bill and Grace. Instead, in walked this tall, gangly, emo looking kid, with ridiculously tight skater pants, a black shirt, with his hair obviously dyed black. He was wearing dark sunglasses that made him seem distant from everyone else. I was upset not to see Chris and wondered who this goon was (yep, just what I thought).

     I was then rudely interrupted when we all discovered that MY passport, that had been given to our youth pastor for "safe" keeping had not made it to the airport with everyone elses. "only me" I thought; only I would have something like this happen to me. I guess I should tell everyone that I was successfully failing high school and had been threatened on many occations that I was not going to get to go on the trip. And even though I had raised all of the money I needed, I had not made it to several of the "mandantory" meeting and quite honestly at the time I don't think I was spiritually where I needed to be in order to even go and do what I was meant to do...show love. These things were all concerns of the youth pastor and Dr. Cheatwood himself...my argument of course was that if anything I NEEDED to go and show love so that I could feel love back. Somehow I skated through and made it to the airport, only to get stopped at the gate because I didn't have my passport.

     I ended up staying behind with my friend, Debbie, Dr. Cheatwoods daughter and Aaron's dad's cousin. In the mean time our pastor had found my passport in the copying machine (the youth pastor had made copies of everyone passports for safe keeping, HA) and had made it to San Diego...normally a 2 hour drive, made into a 45 minute drive. Debbie and I were able to catch the next plane to Panama (only 2 seats were still available).

    Once in Panama we found out that my bags had not been picked up with my original flight and I was left without a bag...LUCKILY I had packed all of my essentials in my carry-on and it was later tracked down and I got it 2 days later.

    With all of this going on I had little time to even notice Aaron. I tried at one point to teach him how to assist Dr. Cheatwood, he ended up getting frustrated at me ( I didn't even know this guy!) and left. I couldn't believe it. How dare he! Why wasn't Chris there instead?

     That night we played the Jesus Film for everyone in the village, most of whom had never even seen a video. When I tried to walk out the door I was stopped by someone standing in the doorway. I sighed and said "yeah, you make a better door then a window!). Aaron turned around looked right over my head and said "hmmm. I thought I heard something" and turned back around. It was love after that!! Literally...love at second sight! My heart started fluttering and from then on I tried to be everywhere that he was.

     After the film was over that night we all went down to the river. We were told by the locals that there were not any "cocodrillos" in the river, but warned by Dr. Cheatwood that there were. We went anyway, of course, only to get down there and get stopped in our tracks by all of the defensive clicks from the crocodiles. I grabbed on to Aaron, who was conveniently right beside me, and we both ran back up to the main house. 

     The rest of Panama is pretty much history...Aaron was a typical boy and completely oblivious to me.  Although I had an insider (Cory) in the guys room who said that he was always asking about me. I also had all of the other guys in there telling him to stay away. Cory would drop hints for Aaron all the time and eventually he got the idea. 

    One day I was tired of assisting Dr. Cheatwood and someone else had taken my place and I had some down time. I didn't want down time, I wasn't there to not do anything so I asked the missionary if there was something else I could do that didn't have to do with medical stuff. I never worked in the eyes because Grace (Aaron's grandma) was the one heading that up and it felt like she had a third eye and THAT eye was ALWAYS on me. So I passed up on the opportunity to work in the eyes (which were boring compared to the blood and gore in the dental) The missionary told me that he had a bucket and a paint brush and I had a HUGE zip-line tower that they had just built that I could paint. So my friend Lauren and I went up there to paint for a while. A little while into painting we could see someone, about a mile away, walking towards us...it was Aaron :). Lauren started to conveniently feel sick and left and it was just me and him up there. I got to talk to him and REALLY get to know him. I told him I was interested in him, he seemed shocked (oblivious) and told me that he felt the same way. That night I asked him to prom and he asked me to mine. 

    After that we were able to see eachother every two weeks, between my prom and his and...what are the odds? In all the high schools in the entire state of California, Paso Robles and Brawley had their grad nights at Disneyland on the same night. I found out after the first time that I came up to visit that my Aunt lived only 2 minutes from Aarons house. So for the Summer I would come up and stay with her for a week and then he could come down and stay with his dad's cousin Debbie and we were able to be with eachother. 

    To me ALL of this seems like a plan that would be impossible to plan or make work without some sort of heavenly hand. There were so many circumstances that should have made this relationship impossible to happen, but against all the odds, it did! And we couldn't be happier!

I found this picture on my computer the other day and showed it to Aaron. We both couldn't stop laughing!

    Aaron's mom was planting flower in her planter and we went over to watch since Emily LOVE to be ouside

Emily and her Aunt Kaylee

I have more picture on my other blog. In case you couldn't tell that is a bulldog puppy. I think the look like catfish when they have their heads up like that. Here is my favorite one...the rest are on the other page.

     Aaron and I are coming up on our 3 year anniversary! and just past the 4 year mark of the first day that we met. After our late night talk last night I realized someting...I love him more today than I ever have!!

Problem Solved...kind of

     For those of you who are computer savvy...I had a certain program set as my default for opening and importing my pictures...once imported they were transformed into the format for that program..in order to turn them into a .jpg I had to export them into that format. When my 30 day trial was over for this program, I lost all of the pictures I hadn't exported (which I had saved just in case on my computer in the raw format but not the edited form). With that said I have to go through the ringer to upload my pictures to my computer without going through the default program...that of course doesn't exist anymore! The good news is that I will have the REAL version of this amazing program in my possession in a few short days and the problem will be solved and I can upload all of the pictures over the last week! :)

     For those of you who aren't computer savvy and have no idea what the last paragraph said...I figured out the problem and it will be fixed in a few days...leaving you with a ton of pictures from the last week...hang in there.

     I LOVE LOVE LOVE photoshop but the goal of taking pictures is to be able to take the right picture the first time and not have to change anything except maybe a few lighting effects to add to or enhance the emotion of the photo. The new program I am getting does ONLY this. It only effects the lighting and colors of a photo where Photoshop itself works more around modifications like deleting a person or tree out of the background...which, like I said, shouldn't be too much of an issue if you took the right picture the first time. Lightroom (this new program, which is a branch of photoshop) has spoiled me rotten...where it used to take me 5 minutes to edit one picture it now takes me 20 seconds to do the exact same thing. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that I haven't edited any pictures because it jut takes too darn long in photoshop...I did do these yesterday so that everyone has SOME visual stimulation! 

Can every one see the one lock of hair off to the left?! Her hair is getting ridiculously long! I'm starting to have to do something with it!...what to do? I have no idea. (this picture was taken with a much better camera than mine...I LOVE the lighting, effects, EVERYTHING...this camera is my goal)

Reggie, my noble beast!!...and he looks like one too! He's shedding all of his beautiful fluffy winter hair, leaving him look mangey and scraggly, but still HANDSOME! AND he had just played in is pool for 30 minutes.

     Hopefully in the near future I will also have some pictures of some cute little red fox puppies and their parents...who, conveniently, live under the main driveway to our house...THAT explains alot! This also mean I have to get up at the break of dawn to get these pictures...we will see about that one! HA

Lion, tigers and NO MOUNTAIN LIONS

     So to start off, I'm still having issues with this thing letting me upload photos. Everytime it tells me "error 404" (so for anyone who has a blogspot and knows what this means PLEASE let me know)

     On a much better note...we figured out exactly what the sound we heard was. A RED FOX. You wouldn't think that such a beautiful and shy creature could make such an AWEFUL noise! Funny part of this story is that just that afternoon we had seen a fox right next to our driveway and stopped and looked at it. It stopped and looked right back at us as if to say "yes? why don't you take a picture"...of course I didn't have my camera :( I wouldn't have ever imagined a fox. So now I can rest easy! Last night we slept with the windows open again and every little noise scared me to death! Aaron even yawned once and it kind of sounded like a growl and the hair on the back of my neck stood up, I could feel all of the adrenaline surge through me and every sweat gland in my body felt like it had just exploded, all of the hair on the back of my neck stood up and I was ready to kill! Even after I woke up with my fists all balled ready to fight and realized it was just Aaron snoring away it still felt hard to breath and every hair was standing on end. I found a video on the internet for you. Theres no picture just noise but imagine this sound RIGHT outside your window at 4 in the morning.

Lions, Tigers and...MOUNTAIN LIONS?! oh my!

     So I've said many times that my greatest fear is big cats...I have no idea why. I can only date it back to when I was little and I watched Tarzan the cartoon. It's still one of my favorite disney movies but I can't watch the part where the "mom" ape walks into the house that the people built because she heard a baby crying. She had just lost her own little baby ape to the jaguar that romes the area and was lured in by the babies cries. Just as she uncovers the basket with the little baby in it a tail drops down behind her from the rafters. I know it's coming and I jump EVERY time. Anyway the movie goes on where she saves the baby he becomes her own...and so on. I won't ruin it if you haven't been privileged enough to watch it yourself. 

    I can't remember ever having a tramatic experience or even seeing one in real life...so I don't know where my fear stems from. Maybe it's a control issue. Like I can't stand the possibility of becoming second on the food chain...? Whatever it is...it's not healthy. With all this being said, I live in the middle of mountain lion territory. Although there aren't seen where we actually live very often, it has happened and they have been seen. 

     So, the point that I'm trying to get to: Last night we were asleep in bed with all of our windows open because it was an amazingly cool night and slightly breezy. Definaly my favorite time of year. I was woke up by this AWFUL noise right outside of our window. It sounded like a mixture of a cat getting it's neck rung and a newborn baby cry (WIERD, I know.) I woke Aaron up and he was like "well that's annoying!" and shut the window. I layed there thinking of all the things that it could be and then went back to sleep. So this morning I woke up and youtubed all things I though it could have been. We had just seen a fox earlier that afternoon. Not a fox, not an owl, not a bird, not a raccoon or opossum...I couldn't figure it out. And if you know me, I don't like not being able to figure things out. Aaron's grandpa was here so I went out and asked him since he lives way out in the boonies and I figured he has heard every wild creature there is. You know what he said?...one guess...and I bet you guessed right...he very non-chalauntly said "sound's like a mountain lion. I could have died right then and there. I still don't know if this is what we heard or not BUT when I youtubed it, it was the closest thing that I had found that whole morning. If I hear it again I will know for sure when the hair on the back of my neck stands up and I can't breath. I will keep everyone posted :)

P.S. Blogspot is fussing with me uploading pictures so hopefully I will have some up soon after I figure out what his going on. Sorry to everyone who only looks at this for the pictures :P