There's a ninja in the house...

All I can say is: Wow. I'm excited. Let the pictures speak for themselves about the newest addition to our home (garage):

And I love it:

2003 Kawasaki Ninja ZX-6R 636. Hot.

Lying is bad... but reading Stephanie Meyer's books is fun.

I lied. Apparently all I can read is Twilight.

Last night, while reading some brain sharpening book by some brilliant author, I decided that I really just wanted to indulge my Stephanie Meyer addiction a little more and I read Twilight, again, for the umpteenth time. ::sighs::

Is there no hope for me?

Inkdeath

After reading Twilight, I've found that no book can capture my imagination and transport me to imaginary worlds where adventure and untold enjoyment lie. The lackluster I'm feeling towards books includes my recent visit with Inkdeath which, ironically, is about literally disappearing into a book's story. I LOVED the first two books in the series, Inkheart and Inkspell, but that was before Twilight came and changed the allure that books have for me. However, the spell that Twilight has cast over me, making all subsequent books seem dull and uninviting, has not made me want to read less. If anything, I feel compelled to keep reading until I can again lose myself in the wonder of a story unfolding on the pages before me.

Now, after disclosing my very unfair prejudice against all non-Stephanie Meyer books, I have to say that all-in-all, I did enjoy Inkdeath. While I didn't escape into the book, I did enjoy my visit there and found her writing to be tolerably enjoyable, but I think I may have to leave the genre of young adult fiction for a while, and jump back to the world of non-fiction and adult-ish books. Alas, while my young heart yearns for adventure, princesses, dragons, vampires, and other magical and creative creatures of the book world, I may be temporarily ruined due to Stephanie Meyer's ability to weave me into her world and leave me there, yearning for more words to sate the addiction that she's created. So, perhaps, my brain will just have to be sharpened by the brilliant intellect of C.S. Lewis a little more. If I can't disappear into a book with magical worlds, I might as well choose books that will make me think more deeply about God, life, and the meaning of the universe.

So wish me luck as I embark on this new and old adventure of the mind - seeking out truth where it can be found.

Life and all that good stuff

I have been terribly remiss in blogging the last month or two. I do have excuses. Lots of them. However, in order to figure out what I've been doing, we're going to play a game called two lies and a truth, and you have to figure out which statement is the truth:

1. I've was captured by a dragon and was only recently rescued by my knight in shining armor, also known as Andy.

2. I was at the grocery store and tried an apple and have been asleep until recently when my knight in shining armor kissed me.

3. I have been busy editing, shooting weddings and senior sessions, designing albums, meeting with a bunch of potential clients, picking a pumpkin from the pumpkin patch with the family, reading Inkdeath, and just trying to keep the house clean and stay on top of life.

So what do you think? What have I really been doing lately?

On to more interesting subjects of note, I went to Chantel's choir performance this week and it was awesome! They did a super job. I was so inspired by a violinist they had accompanying them that I've decided to take a violin class. I'm really excited about learning. I've always loved the sound of stringed instruments above all other musical instruments and the violin and cello have always been at the top of that list. So, here's to a noisy home for the next few months while I struggle to learn how to play!

Oh wait - here's a picture of my cute sister doing her choir performance!

Also, I have super exciting news! I recently got a job at a bridal store! We weren't sure whether I would have time for another job (I'm still not convinced), but we figured that once wedding season begins slowing down I'm going to be lacking things to do. So, we decided that it wouldn't hurt to give it a try and see how things go. So far I LOVE the job! I get soo excited to go to work. It's hard to believe because it is the only job (besides photography) that I have ever been excited about. Pretty much, I get to hang out with cool people, help brides find the dress of their dreams, and promote our photography business at the same time. It couldn't be more perfect. They've given me permission to chat with brides about our photography business, which is awesome! The job is even better because it's commission based, so a lot of the girls are easily making more (per hour; not net income) selling wedding dresses than I did at the law firm. So, all said, we're pretty happy about it.

Alas, photo editing pulls me back like a curse of obedience forcing me to succumb.... I'm excited for the season to be over soon!

Bringing home the bacon venison!

Well, as Elisha lamented earlier, I headed off to hunt the illustrious Mule deer in Eastern Oregon (just East of the Santiam Pass.) I had a great time, though the weather wasn't too friendly. Despite that setback, I brought back some grub for the winter - my first deer. A picture says a thousand words, and as a photographer, I tote that advantage whenever I can! Here's some shots (if any look blurry, it's because the lens fogged up because it was so cold!)

As he fell after one shot:

Victory!

Preparing for the butcher:

Elisha didn't go hunting, but she likes the results:

Urrghh:

Hunting, Church, and Life

Andy went hunting this weekend and left me to the company of my imagination. Fortunately, my imagination imagined me out with my mom and sister in downtown PDX looking at art galleries, grabbing food and drinks at McMenamins, and exploring the wonder of the Greek festival (which, in the end, wasn't so wondrous). However, we could have been sloshing through muddy fields in the pouring rain and it still would have been fun. It was so lovely having a girls day and just laughing and spending time together.

And then, to my happy surprise, Andy called this morning and said he's returning to me early! Yay for shooting a buck early and coming home to his wife, who has missed him. :D

So I'm off to church this morning with Taleah & Jeremy (we're looking for a church, by the way. Does anyone have any good suggestions for the Clackamas/SE Portland area??). We're trying Eastridge this morning and we'll see how things go. The church looks a little too big for my tastes, but then a big church may not be so bad. I guess we'll see!

And I just started reading Ink Death! Woo hoo! I'm excited to see if it is as good as its predecessors!

Grinning

Gah. I'm having a bad day. A REALLY bad day. The kind of day where even losing yourself in the world of Stephanie Meyer doesn't help. The kind of day where taking a soothing relaxing bath with candles doesn't help. The kind of day where a long walk to our mailbox doesn't help. The kind of day where you still don't feel better after your mom and sister come over to try and cheer you up. Yup, I'm having that kind of day.

Why? All because I care WAY too much about people's opinions. I get that we're not perfect. I get it. I get that God loves me even though I'm not perfect. I get that life is good and being upset about silly comments from random strangers shouldn't upset my feelings of self worth. I get it. But I can't seem to let that comprehension settle into actually believing and living like I know those things. So what do I do? I sit and stew. And edit photos and stew. And blog and stew. With all this stewing, you'd think I'd have made enough to eat to feed the 5,000. And yet, all I have is an upset stomach and the inklings of an ulcer (okay, the ulcer is a bit of an exaggeration).

What's frustrating is that I can't decide whether I want to laugh at this whole situation, or cry, or punch something, or drown myself in a world of make believe, or scrub the bath tub to a sparkling shiny white. I just want to do something that will help me to stop stewing. What is more frustrating was that I thought all these stupid insecurity issues were resolving only to have them fly back as soon as someone hit the "right" nerve. The right wrong nerve. Argh.

Okay, as much as I would love to keep blogging and start trying to focus myself on something positive, I have endless editing to attend to. Not that I would probably be positive in the rest of this post anyway. I would probably just rant more. If you start a blog negatively, it's hard to bring it back to a positive note. It becomes stuck in negative land. So I'm leaving negative land - or at least I'm going to attempt to.

::grins::

See, I'm already grinning.

The Power of Cheapd

Yes. Cheap = awesome + personal satisfaction. With the winter months coming, Elisha and I need two cars - motorcycle riding in Oregon during the winter isn't very fun. Wet, nasty and relatively unsafe, I'd rather just avoid it. When a friend of mine started looking for a new car (it was time) it awoke in me a desire I've had for a while - to own an AWD Subaru. Of course, if I had my way, I would have bought one like Ben did - a $20~k 2008 WRX. Alas, I just can't afford it, my budget was much lower. Much. Lower. However, Craigslist prevailed as it always has, and I picked up a beauty (ok, an ugly duckling) of a 1993 Subaru Impreza wagon for $1400. It came with a roof-rack (essential for the snowboarding trips it was destined for.) Other than that, it had few endearing qualities, short of it's subaru & awd-ness. Elisha and I dubbed it the "Mountain Goat."

What was so ugly you ask? I'll show you:

Yes, this is the roof. Sun+ice+snow+negligence = nasty paint. :( Poor Mountain Goat. So, gearing up with my trusty tools (and many of my father-in-law's that I couldn't afford) I set out to fix this problem myself - given that professional paint jobs run $1000-$20,000. Yeah, not going to spend the value of the car on it's paintjob. Anything looks better than what it is.

Trusty Tool!

Sanded to a glossy, err, shine. More of a luster, actually.

All taped up and ready to go!

All primered up.

All shiny after it's first inaugural wash as a black car!

I learned a big lesson about painting cars - fiberglass bumpers do not like 80grit sandpaper. I scratched the crap out of my bumpers. Oops. However, an ingenious idea to the rescue! Spray-on truckbed liner! This stuff is fabulous - I 1/2 wish I had painted the whole car with it!

Preppin' the booty for some truck bed liner:

Pretty bumper.

Nice 'n shiny after it's first wax job this morning:

All done and ready to take on the world!

Now, it's not the best paintjob in the world - I didn't spend 80-zillion hours on it like I should have to achieve a super-duper paintjob. However, for the $100 and 15 hours of work, it's pretty nice. To do it properly would have required another $50 and another 50 hours (Seriously - it's incredibly labor intensive.) Would I do this again? Most likely not - unless I had another junker car that desperately needed a paintjob and I didn't want to spend any money on it. Some neighbors of mine came by while I was painting and asked what I would charge to paint their car - I had to laugh. This job is ridiculously difficult, and I will never question how much a bodyshop charges for painting - it is amazing how much sanding it takes to get it right, and I just stripped it - I didn't go through the sanding process properly (because I honestly didn't care.)

Now I have a car I'm not embarrassed to drive down the street in, and I'm excited to take to the mountain! Yay for cheap solutions and internet-how-to's!

WTD

What The Duck rocks my socks off. It is a super funny comic strip aimed at photographers. I read their posts religiously. So when I read this one this morning, I couldn't help but share it with all my lovely blog readers. I think most photographers will get a kick out this.

Melancholy.

Melancholy.

People shouldn't blog when they're feeling melancholy. Nothing interesting is ever said and it usually is a big gripe about life.

Tired.

People shouldn't blog when they're tired. They just make a lot of typos and not a lot of sense.

Frustrated.

People shouldn't blog when they're frustrated. It usually hurts other people's feelings.


Happy.

People should blog when they're happy. It usually is nicer for the world to hear about the good things in life. Like Andy getting a job. We're very happy about this. VERY happy.

Romantic.

People probably shouldn't blog when they're feeling romantic. It's usually gushy and mushy. But then again, we like gushy and mushy. So maybe they should.

Nostalgic.

People definitely should blog when they're nostalgic. All the best lessons, memories, and life are stored in nostalgia. I like remembering.

Thoughtful.

People should blog when they're thoughtful. Being full of thought is often interesting. It often reveals more about oneself. It often reveals more about every one else. It oftentimes takes a bit of thought.

My job =

This is my job.



Exactly. Now bring on the pity.

Our second (shorter) honeymoon

Hey ho neighbor. I'm pleased to say that life has slowed down to a more convenient pace (ie - I can no longer use the "chickens running around with their heads cut off" analogy to describe our life). I'm getting caught up on photo editing, we had a fabulous weekend in Coeur d'Alene last weekend, and this weekend we shot an AWESOME wedding at McMenamins Grand Lodge and then headed up to Sunriver to finish out the weekend relaxing, playing tennis, and hanging out with the fam. Blissful.

I know that Andy talked about how fantastic Coeur d'Alene was already, but I have to reiterate the splendiferousness of our trip. It could not have been more sublime. We arrived at our cozy B&B, the McFarland Inn, and began our weekend of relaxation. The inn is darling and was immaculately attended to. The owner lady wasn't the most pleasant person in the world, but she may have been a little pissy (there is no better word to describe it) because she thought we were arriving on Saturday, instead of our planned Friday. Somehow, when we reserved the date, we had a bit of a miscommunication about this important detail. It was fortunate that she had our room available when we showed up, but she was in poor humor with us the rest of the weekend. Either that or she's normally just a grouch. Fortunately for my low tolerance of grouchy people for prolonged periods of time, we didn't see her much the rest of the weekend but for a few moments every morning when she brought us some of the most fantastic breakfast we've ever had. And how can you be annoyed with a grouchy person when they're serving you yummy food??

Friday we wandered around downtown Coeur d'Alene and browsed the little shops, strolled along the world's longest board walk (see photos below in Andy's post), took some snapshots of the Coer d'Alene resort where we stayed the second half of the trip, listened to an awful drumming band jamming near the waterfront, and gleefully indulged my obsession with playgrounds - especially ones that are designed like castles!

Saturday involved sleeping in until 9am, eating aforementioned fantastic breakfast, renting kayaks for an hour and rowing around the lake, swimming in the lake (which was awesome and the perfect temperature for swimming), and then renting sea-doos and doing silly things with them, like trying to throw each other off and into the water. Fun!

Afterwards, Andy and I got cleaned up and he took me out to the nicest dinner at a floating restaurant! It would have been perfect, but I had an upset stomach and the food didn't settle well with it. We headed back and collapsed into bed exhausted around 11PM.

The next day, we took much slower. We got back massages, enjoyed checking into the Coeur d'Alene resort where we got upgraded to one of the nicest rooms in the place which is normally like $500 a night (woo hoo!), and talked about our goals in life, our values, and other important things. It was so awesome to sit and refresh ourselves with what we're looking forward to, what we value, and so on. Many of the things we discussed, we both felt/knew subconsciously to be true, but there is sometimes so much value in discussing these feelings and assumptions out loud. In the evening, Andy convinced me into a trip to Cabelas which I happily harassed him about. Considering that he "loathes" shopping without a purpose, his request went awry with what I know of his personality. So, I've modified my perception of his personality; It's not that he doesn't like shopping, he just likes shopping for things that interest him (and apparently home decor and women's clothing are not one of those things).

This trip was our first chance since Christmas to take a break and relax. We've been so busy that we really haven't made time to just have fun together. It was so refreshing for us to do this and it made us determined to include more time just for the two of us to have fun together.

Beautiful Coeur D'Alene Idaho

Well, it is the last day of Elisha and I's trip to Coeur D'Alene Idaho. It has been absolutely amazing -a short, 4-day second honeymoon. What a blessing for us after all the hustle and bustle of wedding season, jobs, moving and a complete lifestyle change after finishing college. It's quite an amazing place, and we've had a wonderful time. It is beautiful - I'm sitting out on the balcony of our hotel room that looks over the city, with a side view of the lake. I just want to stay here forever (forget work!) and keep enjoying the view. But alas, all good things come to an end. However, we won't be without some wonderful memories - and some great pictures! Given that it's Elisha and I's lot in life, we took a bunch. This blog is going to be f-u-l-l of photos. So enjoy!

The first place Elisha and I stopped in WA - a truckstop for some food. Ooh.

The vast nothingness that is Eastern WA...it's even more nothing than Eastern OR.

Bad to the bone.

Idaho!

Coeur D'Alene

The beautiful Coeur D'Alene Resort

The sun setting over the lake

Our first dinner was here

Elisha and I on the "World's longest floating boardwalk"

A different sunset over the lake.

The view from our Coeur D'Alene hotel room balcony.

Elisha and I on the balcony

Our room - we got a free upgrade from the bottom room to the 2nd best! Wow!

The opulent water building in which the owner of 1/2 of Coeur D'Alene works

Elisha razzes me endlessly about this...but yes, I wanted to go SHOPPING on vacation...I saw this on the way in to Coeur D'Alene in Post Falls, ID and couldn't say no...

Heh heh heh....I could spend a zillion hours here

Hey bubba!

Coeur D'Alene at night

All shots taken with our little point & shoot... I'm proud of it!

For me?

:D Anyone want to buy me my dream bike? It's for sale. I'll be your friend forever if you do. A steal at only $14,700 too!

Jazz with Lane

I could be corny and say that I'm totally jazzed about this writing this jazzy post, but I won't.

On Friday (I think), we went to see Tropic Thunder with Lane (which I hated). I could hardly bear that the night would end on such a disappointing note; spending money on a stupid movie with no redeeming qualities = bad mood for Elisha. So, I convinced the boys (somehow) to "wander" downtown Portland looking for good music, yummy food, and happy drinks. Andy imagines walking around and finding a cool place; I'm not sure what Lane imagined; I was just excited the night was not ending with said dumb movie. Well, to Andy's chagrin, our search turned into aimlessly driving around downtown pointing places out after we had already driven past them. For those of you who are acquainted with my husband's driving preferences, you know what this did to him. To those of you not acquainted with his driving preferences, let's just say that we bought a GPS to save our marriage from endless frustration (ie - Elisha's driving prefences: drive aimlessly around until she happens upon desired location or calls and declares her state of temporary mislocation).

Lane, in a valiant effort to prevent further awkward married "discussions," suggested a fabulous little jazz bar. We happily agreed due to our desire to avoid any more uncomfotable conversations. However, we were all pleased with our end result. Happily our night ended with drinks, dessert, laughter, and much improved spirits. We took some snapshots with our little point-n-shoot for your viewing pleasure.

Driving to downtown -

Dessert menu:

yummy drinks -

"Artsy" (aka bad) photo of the band -

The happy couple (us!) -