So remember when I mentioned that photo op with Ben's cousins? I was only a little excited. We went a couple weeks ago to Elmwood Park here in Omaha and shot for just under an hour. It started to get SUPER hot towards the end. Good ol' July in Nebraska. Hot and humid by 9 am.
Anyway, even though there wasn't much to lose, I felt like I was going on stage to sing back in high school or college. I don't know why I was nervous, but there it is. I was.
Looking through the pictures afterwards, it was easy to spot a million things I would have done differently. Different settings, different angles, different positions. But that's the goal, right? Learning. Getting better each time.
Here were some of my favorites... meaning ones I'm not embarrassed to show you or Matthew & Jessica :) They were such troopers and I'm sooooo appreciative they let me practice on them.
i love how natural their smiles look here.
this picture makes me feel like i'm sneaking up on a moment :)
the way Matthew looked at her was so sweet!
isn't that ring setting beautiful!?
that excited look is so fun!
After I stopped being nervous, it was so fun to take pics with these two. Props to Matt and Jess for being such troopers! Here's to hoping they like some of them ;)
I found this picture on the internet & it seemed to accurately portray what this post is about. do not worry. i would not wear those sandals. :)
An old friend recently facebook-messaged me and asked this:
I happened to click on your blog about you being a
stay-at-home mom. Can I ask how you made that decision? Was it a
no-brainer or a carefully-prayed about decision? I would love to stay
home, but I'm torn about giving up teaching for a little while.
This feels personal to share with you all, but personal is good. That's kind of the point of this blog I suppose. Sharing my personal thoughts and processing and feelings... with the world. Hmm. That's weird.
Anyway, here was my response:
ay. we've given this a lot of thought. and being in that age where lots
of people we know are having babies, i've seen several couples make
various decisions and seen various results. so i'll try to weigh in,
although i'm certainly no expert in the matter yet!
for us, it
was part no-brainer and part carefully-prayed-about. as you know, i
loved teaching. i loved working with kids & feeling like i was
making a difference. but i've kind of always wanted to stay home with
my kids when they were young if i was in a situation where that would be
possible. in and of ourselves, we were leaning towards me staying home
full time, but we prayed about it carefully to avoid taking matters
into our own hands and just doing what we wanted. the more we prayed,
the more we felt like the Lord was really calling me to stay home with
Adelyn. Part of knowing his answer to our prayer came in circumstances
(some people say 'open doors') and part came in our desires/unity in
marriage so,
for example, ben was accepted into a 1 year masters' program at harvard.
and long story short - it was the best opportunity for him on the
board. well, it'd be kind of silly for me to apply for a job in boston,
only to be there for 1 year and break even as far as the income goes.
also, we observed other people balancing work and kids and felt more and
more like we wanted me to stay home. on top of that, when i went back
from maternity leave, there were 10 weeks left in the school year, we
got a taste of what it was like to have me working full time with a kid.
i felt like a crazy person. getting home between 4 and 5 on a good
day, rushing to do dinner, it's kinda baby fussy time, putting addie to
bed, and then we'd try to have a conversation before passing out from
being so tired. not to mention - i was nursing, so, pumping to maintain
milk supply was time consuming and not very effective. i ended the
year just in time to get back to nursing a lot in order to boost milk
supply. otherwise, i'm sure i would have had to just switch to formula.
after those few months, we just felt certain that that pace of life
wasn't what the Lord wanted for us. I know other people balance
work/family well & i'm assuming you've been doing that some... but
for us, the pace was unsustainable.
other situations i'm observing result in a similar thing. a busy pace, tired parents who wish they could spend more time with their little one(s). don't get me wrong - i am NOT criticizing them. i see people who want to be home with their children and can't for whatever reason. it is real and it is their life. and it is what it is. there are other situations we could talk about another time, but that's not really the point.
here's the flip side - i've thought about this a lot and ihink God gives us as
Christians a lot of freedom. people like to take their convictions and
make it 'biblical,' but really, God doesn't tell moms to stay home or
work. He defines the role of a mother & wife - train up your child
in the way he should go; nurturing; comforting; manage the affairs of
your household; prepare food for them; respect your husband; in all things love; etc...
but ultimately, there is freedom in what that looks like day in and day out.
i think
that's what makes it hard.
if i were you, i would prayerfully consider the decision with your husband and
then obey what God says to do, even if it's hard. He will definitely
bless you.
As far as the giving up the teaching side of it... i
think teaching in general is a gift. one that you can use in a variety
of ways even if you're not teaching in the public schools. obviously as
your kids get older, you teach them every day. or you can do sunday school. or bible studies.
or tutoring. or volunteer in the public schools. of course, that's not the same as teaching in your own classroom. my
hardest thing to reconcile was how much i care about the public school
system and helping kids improve and improving the system overall. i pictured going back to school to get a higher degree and
perhaps working as a principal or up higher in order to see larger
scale changes. staying home means i might never do that. but at the
end of the day - i don't know the future. God does. those were at one
time my dreams and desires but as i seek to obey God and follow his
leading, he helps me align my desires for my life with his. now, i want to stay home with adelyn. some day, it may mean God will lead me to go back and do those things or it may mean
something different.
if i (or you) believe that 1.) God wants the
best for me and my family
2.) God knows the end from the beginning
3.) God is speaking to me and leading me....
then, it's worth praying
and obeying even if the answer has mixed emotions/ feelings/ results at
the time.
i hope that all makes sense & helps you guys
process through the decision in some way. it's a big choice. (although,
it's not a forever choice. you can always change your mind next year if
it's a disaster.)
what are your thoughts?
sorry i wrote a freakin' novel!!!!
well there it is. all my thoughts spewed out on a (very long) page screen.
fear not - you've made it to the end.
any other people's thoughts on this in the comment section below are welcome! i love the discussion that a blog can generate.
Tanya, Akiel, Ariel, Josh, Chris, Hannah, Mandy... and Shawn T.
No, those are not potential names for the baby that is not on the way. ;)
Those are the names of my Insanity friends. They are in way better shape than me, but after 5 1/2 weeks down, I feel like we're BFFs.
Okay, not really.
But, my brother-in-law, my husband, and i are doing insanity.
We are on week 6.
It is hard.
Every day, i hate it before i start and i love it when we're done.
I am blogging to procrastinate starting, but Addie is down for a nap and it's time to kick our butts into gear.
So off we go.
Anyone else done insanity? If you exercise, what is your routine and what do you like about it? We'll be done in a few weeks, and I'm starting to think about what comes next...
Well, we were on vacation for 9 days with the Pierces (my family) hence the absence in posts.
It was fun, relaxing, good family time.
We were in Green Lake, WI.
A friend texted me yesterday... "y u no blog"
So, time to get back to it!!
there was laughing
there were hats
there was fishing
there was tubing
Bri/ Viv & Ben/ Me each took a night cooking... my mom took the rest.
there was hammocking
there was mini-golfing in the dells
yes - that is the top of a neon sleeveless wisconsin dells shirt with a mustache on my husband.
So, I blogged for 3 years over here http://renandben.blogspot.com
If you're new around here, go check it out. It's not very exciting but it'll give some more of our background.
Why the change?
It's not concrete.
I had taken a break. I wanted a new look. A new focus. A new title. A new season in life.
And here we are.
Nothing profound, necessarily.
But fresh? yes.
honest? absolutely.
Everyone needs a fresh start sometimes. And so here I am.
On a new (blogging) adventure. (oh and new mommy - moving- across-the-country adventure.)
Glad you're here with me.
Thanks for taking some of your precious free time to read.
Ummm. Guess what?
Somebody is letting me take their engagment pictures!!!
Boo ya! I am so excited :) God is so good to give me an opportunity to indulge in this fun hobby & hopefully provide this couple we like with some halfway decent pictures.
What's that? You'd like to hear every.single.detail. of how this went down? Ok. If you insist.
So we're at 4th of July brunch with the Cooks (extended family) and the conversation went to Ben's cousin and his fiancee who are getting married next summer. We were bombarding them with questions about plans (actually, maybe it was only me doing the bombarding, now that i think about it... I get excited about weddings). Anyway, I asked about engagement pictures. They said something that indicated it wasn't a high priority for them, but they might look into it. She seemed more interested than he. Isn't that always the case, ladies? :) Then, the conversation went on to other things.
As we said good bye later, I got the idea to offer to take pictures. Just for fun. As soon as the idea popped into my head, I had to restrain myself. These cousins are so sweet and just a tad quieter than I am (understatement). And I honestly don't know them too well. And well, I can be, ... shall we say... intense when I get excited about something. Wipe that humongous grin off your face, I said to myself as the idea ran through my mind. Be Calm. Cool. Collected. [I'm sure I had a really awkward opposite of 'collected' look on my face.] Don't say anything. Think about it. It will be so awkward if you put them on the spot. Don't say it.
And they left. And I held my tongue. I sent them a facebook message later with one too many exclamation points and smiley faces.
Now I definitely DID NOT want to oblige them, but I did want to offer to take some pictures as a gift if they were interested in having pictures but not wanting to pay the big bucks (or any bucks!!) for them.
Now let's get this straight. I am not professional in ANY sense of the word. I enjoy taking pictures and have a moderately decent camera & lens (Canon Rebel t3i - it takes good pics & 50 mm 1.8 - the amateur version of the 'nifty fifty' if you will).
I've always liked taking pictures. (The invention of the digital camera was a good thing for the high-school-love-to-take-a-million-pictures version of me. Oh wait. That is still me.)
It takes me many many shots to get one that I love.
But I love capturing a moment.
Especially lovey-dovey-mushy-gushy & every day rmoments between people.
So I am super excited (and a little shy, embarrassed, honored, awkward, nervous, and a host of other things) that M & J are going to let me take some pictures of them.
Like I told them - worst case scenario, they waste an hour or so of their life and every picture is terrible.
But they are so fun and nice, I'm sure that won't happen!
after 3 trips to chicago with my camera in the diaper bag and my lenses wrapped in clothes in the suitcase [my idea of risk-taking], i've decided to invest in a camera case.
actually, my sweet husband bought me a camera bag for christmas, but i thought i'd like to have one that could dual as a purse/diaper/camera bag and this one was a little small for that. so i get to put that 'credit' and have yet to choose one!
this is because i agonize over decisions. okay, agonize might be a little dramatic.
but i go back and forth, back and forth.
turkey or chicken?
burger or quesadilla?
tea or coffee? blue or brown camera bag?
purple or aqua running shoes?
'real' or digital photo album? (which i wrote about yesterday.)
[these are real decisions i've had to make in the last 48 hours. this is clearly something i need to work on.]
and now... the decision is camera bag or inserts for any bag.
(although i was still debating on the color. soooo many choices. have i mentioned that lots of choices make it hard for me?)
okay, you really want to see the other color choices? since you asked. i narrowed it down to these:
i had already ruled out this beautiful light blue after polling on instagram. people pointed out it's trendy and would show dirt easily. if i was the type to own several expensive camera bags, i might buy a blue. but since i'd like to use this bag until things start falling out the holes that wear in the bottom, i better pick something classy.
and then, i looked a little more.
i shouldn't have looked.
i should have just clicked 'purchase' and made the order.
but i found this. and now i have another choice.
it molds so you can use 1, 2, or 3 of the pockets for a variety of sized options. it comes in different colors. it's padded and made by people who make other reliable photographer gear. and you can just pop it in any bag.
i don't have a bag i love though and i'm not one to buy expensive purses.
to summarize today's dilemma in less than a million words:
do i get the bag from jo totes or the insert & buy a purse for it?
help me decide quickly!! we have a couple vacations and a big move coming up and i need to protect the gear. :)
When I was 11-ish, I went to a creative memories get-together with my mom at her friend's house.
I had never really even heard of scrapbooking.
Wait a minute... I could cut up pictures with crazy zig zag scissors, glue them on the page and add stickers!?!
An 11 year old girl's dream activity.
Well, I went to town and made my own baby album, all the way up through 5th grade, and kept adding to it through middle school. If it wasn't packed away in a storage room (with all the rest of our earthly possessions... mad props to my in-laws for letting us store it ALL at their house, including a piano), I'd take pictures of it so you could see the pleathora of uneven oval shaped pictures cut with zig zag and wavy scissors.
Off I went to high school - the braces went on, the awkwardness increased, and it turns out one of my new BFFs loves scrapbooking too. So my dad let us create a space in the basement for it with a huge old table and we scrapbooked our high school years away. Pages and pages of showchoir competitions, sleepovers, and musicals.
College - yeah. These years are not really documented in photo albums. I don't know why. Never got around to it.
So, here we are. 3 years into marriage. 6 months into motherhood.
NONE of our married life is any kind of album, except a facebook album. If we are facebook friends, you know I am not shy about my family pictures.
My mom threw a baby shower for me and people made scrapbook pages for a baby album, which I got to pick out. I loved that this one wasn't a traditional 'baby girl' album.
I've started working on this because I have approximately 2,368 pictures of sweet Adelyn Joy's first few months of life (that is no joke), and I think it'd be fun to give her a good ol' baby album some day. Plus, it's fun to make.
But, this type of scrapbooking is no longer sustainable for me anymore.
Annnnnnnd it only took me 6 paragraphs to get to the dilemma. Here we are. I could use your input.
I do LOVE pictures. I love taking them and looking at them. Reminiscing through them. And I love the opportunity to journal, record, remember. So, what makes the most sense for this season of life? (Stay-at-home-mom-possibly-moving-a-lot-young-baby(maybe more babies in the future)-trying-to-make-some-money-on-the-side-etc... season)
Project Life?
I bought a kit to do 'project life' by Becky Higgins. You can check out the gist of it here. Basically, it's a binder with page protectors that are slotted for pictures. And you can additionally purchase precut cards to journal on and label.
Pros: I love the photo-journaling aspect of this. It was reasonably cheap compared to making an entire scrapbook album and the stuff to complete it takes up very little space. I can leave it out and update it regularly pretty easily. Real printed photos. call me old fashioned, but i love them.
Cons: the name is cheesy; the binder is huge. So as I fill up binder after binder, I am left with a ton of 12 x 12 binders to store somewhere.
sample project life page
Mix Book
Pros: Small; easy to store; I have made a coupledigital photo albums for people and I
really like this too. Very customizable. Or you can click and drag into
a decent template; you can print multiple - easy grandparent gifts. or blog give-aways. [you can win a free photo album of my kid!! haha jk] Theoretically, you could work on a project over a period of time and update it regularly as you take the pictures. I've only ever done them in a short amount of time when I'm coming up on a gift deadline. It'd be easy to add fun phone pictures, like from instagram.
Cons: I've only used shutterfly and I haven't loved the quality. Real printed photos are way better. But, a friend of mine uses mixbook and those turn out great. I haven't done the math. I wonder if it's quite a bit more expensive if you want to do a lot of pages and print good quality ones.
I'm loving THIS 'summer' theme from mixbook. (They won't let me copy a picture) :(
Nothing
I could blog instead.
Or record my kid(s)' memories "Dear Sophie" style...
Have you seen this?
(get out the kleenex box.)
So, what do you think?
Any other moms have something easy, efficient, fun and creative that I missed?
What's your preference and why?
That means we've known her for half a year. It kinda feels like I've known her forever. And at the same time, like as was just born yesterday. I'm guessing I'll feel like that for the rest of my life.
6 months means...
Swimming with friends.
Loving the exersaucer
Having fun with the baby in the mirror.
Sitting like a big girl in the cart.
Playing with toys. And sitting.
Wrestling dad
Drinking Starbucks.
Peaceful sleeping
Finding toes
thumb sucking
trying fro-yo.
swinging. (more fun than fro-yo apparently.)
and...
she still will fall asleep in my arms if she's really desperate.
.jpg)
