Dale + Kim {Dominican wedding}

Dale and Kim found love in a hopeless place many years ago.  Dale had was mourning the loss of a best friend (my dad) and Kim (my mom) the loss of her husband of 25yrs.  What started out as supporting & comforting one another turned into a beautiful relationship.  These two have overcome so many obstacles, and the love is beaming from them.

It can't be easy gaining two adult girls, none the less opinionated ones!  Dale has been, and still is a saint for all he puts up with (the once coined forever bachelor now has 3 girls to deal with).  He truly is the most laid back person I know and helps center our family.  We love dale so much and couldn't have asked for a better partner for our mother (I am clearly speaking for my sister, tho I know she would agree).

Congratulations Mom & Dale!  Xoxo

A tid bit about me...

For those of you who don't know me, I am the girl on the right in this picture.  My beautiful mother, sister and I are in the Dominican Republic where my mother got married.  I wanted to give a little back story before my next blog post about the wedding.

Twelve years ago we were a happy family of 4 getting excited for our fall trip to Cabos San Lucas for my parents 25th wedding anniversary.  We had an amazing time on our family vacation, leaving some really great memories for us to hold onto forever.  Later that fall my dad passed away unexpectedly from heart disease.  Our lives were forever changed and the smiles were few and far between.  We all grieve differently and luckily the 3 of us have always had each other to lean on and guide us.   We have all come a long way in the last 11yrs, and discovered a new appreciation for life.

This vacation was also amazing and now we have a whole new generation to make memories with.  I look forward to many more family vacations and am beyond thankful that my mom and Dale have this time share in the Dominican with enough room for our whole family!  Thank you for always thinking of your kids (and their kids)!! Xoxo

{Inspired}

As I packed my suitcase for the Dominican I had a hard time narrowing down what photog stuff I NEEDED to bring.  I narrowed it down to 1 DSLR with 4 lenses and no external flash.  But then the water point & shoot Nikon as well ( I bought this camera for last years vacation because my cousin had just gone to Disney and said the big camera is a pain to lug around w a baby!  Weeeelll I forgot to bring the charger for the little camera and ended up lugging the big camera to Disney.). This year I remembered all the chargers and left my computer at home.  Still bringing way to many electronics!!  In fact I brought so much stuff that I somehow managed to loose my ergo baby backpack at the air port in Punta Cana as we arrived.   We had our double stroller ( that the airport staff trashed as they threw it under the plane) and plenty of activities to keep busy!  Getting the boys to sleep wasn't a problem at all, they fell asleep right away every night and Henry learned to just nap when he was tired or he might not get one.  We swam, swam and then swam some more!  The Hard Rock Punta Cana had water slides and a lazy river, it was along the ocean with a beautiful beach and private board walk.  Water sports and extreme sports area, mini golf ( European pool...yes exactly what is sounds like...) horse back riding on the beach, snorkel and scuba amongst many other things to do on the island. I have been to Negril Jamaica, Cabos San Lucas, playa del Carmen and Cozumel Mexico, but I think this(Dominican) is by far my favorite!  I have a real love/ hate relationship with all inclusive's.  I love the resort, and the people that work there are amazing!  I am however very disappointed in the way other people treat the workers!  It makes me very sad to see people in there own country being talked down to because they don't completely understand our language's....when really how rude of us to go somewhere and just expect them to speak English/French ect...!  I also worry that my children will think they are supposed to be waited on all the time!  I personally don't need to be waited on by anyone but my boys and even got in trouble by staff for cleaning up after myself or my kids!  I do love the convenience of all inclusive so that we don't have to worry about money there.  It's all paid for up front and we can just tip and not have to carry as much cash or figure out converting money.  The hard rock is also so so safe, I left my DSLR out all week, the iPad pretty much everything but the passports.

I did think on this vacation I was going to get so much time with my camera and myself.  I actually complained a little to my husband about the lack of time I got for creative freedom on this trip.  Kiddos make things a bit harder.  I was up and out every morning early with Henry ( my 14mo old) I was trying to keep him from waking the 4 yr old.  He is getting pretty verbal and hard to just sit on the beach and take pics with.  I did this 2 days....but the the other days ventured other ended of the resort.  While sitting on our porch at night (this is what my husband and i did every night once the boys were in bed) we got a lot of time to chat about many things.  One big to topic was our kiddos and how we sometimes feel overwhelmed and like single parents being that I leave for work the minute Matt gets home.  We get so little time all 4 of us and usually when we do have that time the boys are all together playing while I try and clean.  With that said, we wouldn't change anything if we could.  I have known since I was a little girl that I wanted to be a 'mom' and be home with my kids until they go to school.  As a matter of fact when we were little my dad asked us what we wanted to be when we grew up and my sister said and Oceanographer, and I said "I'm going to sit around the pool all day and play", to which my dad said "oh boy, how are you going to do that"?  Well I'm sure he is smiling down now seeing us in the backyard sitting around our kiddie pool (it's still a pool right, lol).  

I realized while sitting on the porch watching the stars, this was not my trip for creative freedom with my camera.  This was however my time to figure out my creative journey and start a portfolio.  I love photographing many things, but I'm mostly inspired by telling stories with images.  With that said I figured out what I want to portray in my very first artistic portfolio and I couldn't be more excited!  I literally wanted to lock myself in a room with pen and paper and start writing down ideas.  I have a vision, and know where I want to go artistically.....I am INSPIRED!!