Good Riddance 2011!

2011 was NOT a good year to my family, so farewell to that & on to a new, more promising year! That said there are always things to celebrate, & 2011 was no different in that respect. I had amazing photo sessions with wonderful people, great students at work, and my son prospers daily. That last thing alone is enough to celebrate! Here are a few highlights of those moments. THANKS TO ALL who contributed in making the year easier, and thanks to all my blog readers for your continued support! Happy new year & may God shower endless blessings on each of you all year!

 Meet Teak, named for the strength of the wood. He was going to be born with spinal issues that caused the docs to tell his parents to terminate the pregnancy. Obviously they were wrong. He has the issues, but he's doing great! He's one & walking!

 Styx ...enough said ;)

 Working on our new house.

 Got to meet Brian Stokes Mitchel (thanks Chuck!)

 Our little guy graduated from pre-school!

 We got two new kittens! Meet Oreo!

 David started swimming lessons!

 Little Ellie (my name-sake) turned 2!

 My twin, my friend, & my brother.

 Worked on my sister's new house.

 Went camping

 Played with friends...

 David started Kindergarten!

 Texas wildfires...

 Holidays with the family!

Here's what the JV Players did at Jersey Village High School this past year...

Broadway stars Chuck Wagner & Andrea Rivette working with my students.

And the best for last.... some of my wonderful clients!

I won the lotto & I have no time to collect!

Well... kinda. OK. Not really. I feel like I won the lotto because I've had so many GREAT sessions with clients, and things are going fine in life (generally speaking) recently. I'm closing out the last weeks of a year with Focus 52, and in the middle of Picture the Holidays, both Flickr groups that I'm active with. The problem is, I have no time to enjoy it! When do we say "Enough! Stop the blessings"? NEVER! Bring them on! I feel like I've been blessed each time I book a new photo session, get my son to clean his room (OK, I help), or just get something REAL cooked for my family. I shoot pictures everyday, this month at least, but no time to post or share. In the last couple months I've shot two weddings, several families, produced a play, and hosted out of town family. It's all about to happen again. Here are some highlights:

Tonight I will be going to the annual Worldwide Children's Candle Lighting Memorial. Each year, on the 2nd Sunday of December we light candles at 7 pm in each time zone, wrapping a wave of light around the world for 24 hours, in memory of our children. So tonight is dedicated to my girls, Cheyenne & Emily. I hope to catch up on my blog posts soon. I really want to share the great play we did at work, To Kill A Mockingbird, and I know that after tonight I'll have some more shots to share.

Enjoy the quick look & come back for more. I'll be blogging about the Texas Renaissance Festival, our last play, the candle lighting tonight, and more! All in the next week I hope! Thanks for stopping by. Leave a comment if yo fell like it. I love reading them!

Thankful

       This week in Focus 52 on Flickr we are focusing on THANKFUL. My husband & I hosted Thanksgiving this year. It was one year ago this weekend that we moved into our new house without having sold the old one yet. Two mortgages. We still have not put the other house on the market yet, so one year with two mortgages... I guess it's safe to say that I am thankful for our employment. I can't believe, nor would ever have imagined that we would have been able to manage things this long. It's amazing what you can do when you are in a corner! I am thankful for everyday, everything, everyone, and most of all for the blessings bestowed upon my family & me. We had a tough year. Cancer & old age took two family members & we face the holidays without them for the first time. I decided to hang a ribbon of mini-banners &, as the family arrived, I instructed them to write what they are thankful for. Not everyone participated, but many did, & I enjoyed watching everyone quietly read the comments as the day progressed.

Thanksgiving took on a new meaning years ago when my husband became friends with a native american who is active with his tribal customs. My husband is also part native american. He is from the Blackfoot tribe. He is not active, so we didn't really know too much about Thanksgiving from their perspective. In a nut shell, they hate it. It's all a big lie. They do not celebrate, but mourn. My husband does not like the phrase native american. It's not accurate because this was not "America" when it was colonized. He is a native of this land, and he is an American as it is defined in modern terms.  The idea of celebrating a history that killed a majority of one's race is not something to be celebrated. So we celebrate the new & ever growing fashion of being thankful, a holiday spreading throughout the entire world, & fitting for all races & cultures. We are thankful for the survivors of the Western Natives & for their constant effort to revive & archive their tribal cultures so that we may learn the truth about Thanksgiving, and find gratitude somewhere in the efforts of a few natives who embraced the new people and welcomed them into their land.

If the simple creatures of this world can learn to get along then why shouldn't we?

Brides, Weddings, & Blessings From Heaven!

Well, it's been a while since I posted a blog. Sorry...did I say that last time too? Life gets in the way. This time life brought the nastiest flu virus the doc's office has ever seen. 7 to 10 days of recovery the nurse said.

My most recent weekend was filled with so many things that, as my late father in law would always say, "Burn your candle at both ends & your wick will sag."

Well guess what, my wick sagged. Then just plain fell off. The alarm for a day teaching high school kids went off at 5:15. After work I went straight to a rehearsal & dinner for a wedding I was shooting the next day, got home at about 10:30pm to discover my son had the stomach virus. I was up with him all night, showered, & went to shoot the wedding. I got home at 1 in the morning Sunday & got some sleep, finally. then I woke Sunday morning to, you guessed it, the stomach virus my son had.

While I work on the shots from the wedding I am going to post the shots from the bridal session I did a couple months ago with this weekend's bride, as well as some shots from a wedding I shot for my nephew two weeks ago.

The bridal shoot was a blast since we got to shoot in the old Heights Theater in Houston. Max Harrison has changed it into an amazing art gallery while preserving the history of this glorious building. He was very accommodating & generous to our needs as well. The bride wanted a vintage, old Hollywood look. I think we got it.

The wedding for my nephew & his beautiful bride was in New Braunfels, Texas. It rained & rained before the wedding...after 5 months of drought & wildfires it was hard to complain!

After the rain comes the rainbow! My nephew, and the rest of us, recently lost the patriarch of the family: my father in law. Going to the lake house, his lake house, without him was so hard. We also lost the groom's great grandmother, my husband's grandmother this summer, & our uncle before either of them. As my regular readers already know, my two daughters passed years ago, but here's the thing: as a child the groom, Toby, was particularly close to my oldest daughter, Cheyenne. We lovingly called her our rainbow. Because she was.

So what do you think happened? Just as the pastor announced the newlyweds at the end of the ceremony, a rainbow appeared in the sky over the lake right behind the altar! Everyone just burst out crying. The amazing sign from God that we are never alone. The amazing approval from the old man, his brother, & great grandma. And for me, most of all, the amazing hug it gave us from Cheyenne to Toby.