The Year in Pictures 2011

After a bit of a production delay, I'm excited to finally present the third annual Year in Pictures slideshow! I intended to share this on January 1 as I've done in the past, but a desire to spend time with my hubby on his days off (and my deranged attempt at perfection) kept the project going for a couple of extra days. Last night I was up entirely too late trying to finish it, primarily because I kept going back and tweaking and changing the tiniest little things. I'm a complete nut job sometimes.

There are definitely pictures included that will seem a little random, but let me just tell you my rule for choosing them. Every day that I picked up either my DSLR or my point-and-shoot, I had to include one picture from that day. It might have been from an event I was asked to photograph, a portrait session or a vacation. It might have been something I intended to blog about or a moment I just wanted to preserve. While we all know my standards for "picture worthy" aren't exactly high, at the time that I grabbed my camera, I truly thought there was something that needed capturing! Hopefully most of the time you'll agree, but please be advised that this is 7.5 minutes of your life that you will never get back.

Also, in the interest of full disclosure, there were a couple of times this year that a) I didn't take pictures because someone else already was, or b) someone else had their camera more handy, or c) I actually forgot my camera (which I know is hard to believe). In those few cases, I used a picture taken by someone else from that particular day. I think there are three pictures included that didn't come from one of my cameras, so thanks to Beth, Mel and Sarah for sharing their shots!


Please note that I spent several hours picking and adjusting the music for this video, so if there is no sound by the time you get to it, please leave me a comment and let me know. YouTube is in the habit of disabling the audio of any copyrighted material, no matter how insignificant the use!

Tin Wedding Anniversary

Today I just wanted to give a big shout out to our good friends Jake and Amber, who are celebrating their 10th wedding anniversary today! Way to go, friends! Ten years is a huge accomplishment!

This morning when I went to JibJab to pick out a card for them, I didn't have any saved faces of Jamber (their celebrity name) in my account, which makes me think I hadn't ever cast them in a JibJab video! I was sure they'd agree that this was a horrible travesty, so I proceeded to pick out some good pictures of them to edit and stick into a card. I ended up choosing the same card I've used for our anniversary and that of several other friends in the last few years, but it's just too classic to resist. Plus, it's just so them--this is totally something I can see Jamber doing (wink, wink).

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As you can see from the video, Jake and Amber are a perfect couple and wonderful dance partners. Seriously though, they are happier than 95% of the couples we know and they make marriage look easy. I'm so glad they have been blessed with each other and that we've been blessed with their friendship!

A Sneak Peek for Andrea

Last Wednesday evening I finally got the chance to do another practice photo session with my friend Andrea and her family. Even though I think the temperature was only in the 80s, it was so miserably humid outside I felt terrible for Andrea and her hubby and kids! We wandered all over the cute little Baker campus in Baldwin trying to find spots with good light and tolerable shade, and by the end of the evening I'm pretty sure we were all drenched in sweat. It was fun for me and I loved having the opportunity to practice, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't very fun for anyone else!

When I got home that night I immediately started culling and editing pictures with the intention of putting a few on the blog right away for Andrea and her family to see. But of course it got too late that night, and then the next several nights were busy, so here I am four nights later finally getting a few shots up for them to see! I'm still not entirely happy with my editing job on most of these, so hopefully I'll have time during the next week to get these re-edited and get some other good ones picked out of the bunch. Until then, here are a few quick uploads for Andrea and Randy and the adorable Olivia and Dylan!

Anniversary Acknowledgement

Today I have to give a shout out to our good friends Heather and Grant, even though I know they rarely read my blog. I like to tell myself it's because they can only get a slow connection to the Internets out in the country where they live, but in reality I need to just admit to myself that some people just aren't blog readers! Sadly, I'm not much of a blog reader these days either. Since I no longer have a regular routine at my computer, going to Google Reader only crosses my mind about once a week.

Regardless of whether they see this post or not though, I have to say how proud and honored I am to have them as friends since they are celebrating their 20th anniversary today! How awesome is that? We have no other close friends who've been married for 20 years--in fact, they're our only friends who've been married longer than we have! I think it's pretty darn impressive--not to mention highly unusual these days!

Our dear friends were kind enough to invite us to celebrate with them this weekend with a stay in nearby Weston, but unfortunately we didn't feel like we could get a dogsitter for the night due to Celtic's health. I'm bummed we won't be there to commemorate this milestone, but I'm sure they'll still have a wonderful time without us! Congratulations, Grant and Heather!

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Mike and Tiffany

Today I finally finished editing and uploading the engagement pictures I did two weeks ago for our good friends Mike and Tiffany. Mike and Chad met way back in 1990 when they played football together at Hutchinson Community College. They became good friends and eventually roommates, and a few years later Mike was one of the groomsmen in our wedding. Although we only met Tiff in the fall of 2009 when they started dating, I feel like we've known each other longer because we get along so well! She's super smart, amazingly talented and hilariously funny, and we're looking forward to their wedding in Florida next April!

I was way honored that Tiff and Mike asked me to do their engagement photos (along with a few family pictures with them and Mike's son Maddox), but I was a little nervous because I had only done kid/family/baby sessions before theirs. While I'm getting better at spotting good lighting for shots, I'm still terrible at directing people into poses that look normal and natural. Thankfully, Mike and Tiff had lots of ideas about what they wanted to do and poses they liked. Some worked and some didn't, but that's the beauty of digital photography--you can just delete the ones that look dorky!

Once again, during my initial round of editing, I had a terrible time deleting any. I ended up taking my favorite version of every pose--and there were a ton of different poses! Even when I knew that a picture wasn't one of my favorites, I still kept it because I was afraid it might be one of their favorites! I was glad I did, because Tiffany and Mike definitely chose lots of favorites that I wouldn't have considered! It's just interesting how different people have completely different tastes in poses and processing.

Speaking of processing, in this batch of pictures I ended up using a lot more "actions" in Photoshop than I normally do, only because that's what Tiffany really liked. She loved the black and whites and Pioneer Woman's "Old West" technique especially, so I did a lot of different versions of each of their favorite pics. In the end, this is the one that they choose as their official engagement photo!


While I think this is a great picture, I also think it's funny that it's totally not the one that I would have chosen as my favorite. For some reason I absolutely love the more candid shots--the ones where Mike and Tiff are less posed and more engaged (get it...engaged?) with each other are the ones I love. My point is, I think I'm forever going to be editing every picture in the bunch because I'm always going to remember this session when the "clients" chose completely different favorites than I did!

Regardless, I think there were a lot of good ones in the set. If you have a few minutes, take a look at them and let me know what you think!

Birthday #1

On Saturday Chad and I had the pleasure of attending our little friend Eli's first birthday party. His parents (our good friends Pat and Kristin) threw a wonderful monkey-themed shindig for the little guy complete with an incredible monkey cake and all sorts of other fantastic food. I got to be the official photographer of the event, and I'm glad I could help out in that way since Kristin had her hands full with entertaining guests and Pat was busy manning the grill. Although I haven't gone through and edited all the pictures from the day, here are enough to tell the story of his party!

There were some terrific decorations.

Kristin and her mom made an incredible (and tasty) monkey cake.

Eli was very excited to see his friend Lakin and hugged on her almost the entire day.

He wasn't terribly into opening presents, but he did enjoy playing with the new toys once they were open. I got him this baby blackberry and he immediately knew what to do with it!

Eli had a split second of uncertainty when first given his mini-monkey cake.

The uncertainty soon gave way to this...

...and to this...

...and this! It was a very impressive display of cake eating/playing!

Today was Eli's actual birthday, and this evening I enjoyed more time with the little munchkin and his family when I did his official one-year-old photo session. I came home and started editing right away, and after just a single pass through the bunch I found quite a few that I really like. I hope his parents like them too! I uploaded them quickly in low-quality just so I could provide a sneak peak today!

A Plethora of Pictures

The last few weeks I've had several photography gigs, although I'm not sure if I'm really allowed to call them gigs yet if I'm not charging any money. Maybe someday I'll set up an actual business and website, but for now I'm content to just practice. It's fun for me, and I love to (hopefully) provide pictures for my friends that will adequately capture a special occasion or moment in time.

The disadvantage to taking so many pictures lately is that I'm having a hard time keeping up with all the editing and sharing of them! I take so many darn pictures at each session or event, it then takes me hours to go through and delete, crop, sharpen and color correct them. My biggest problem is that I have no ability to discern which are bad and which are good. It's like 99% of the time I can find something I like about almost every picture I take, and then I can't delete any of them! I have to go through the batches four or five times to figure out which ones aren't worth keeping, and even then I keep thinking that the ones I end up deleting might be ones that someone else would really like! I just really need to work on my discerning eye!

I'm so slow at this whole editing process that I just tonight finished the pictures I took of our friend Vikkie and Brett and their kids two weeks ago. There were just so many in the batch I liked, I could only narrow it down to 192 pictures! I know that's so ridiculous, and I know not all of them are worth printing, but I just couldn't help myself. Especially because of baby Abe, there were just too many absolutely precious shots. There were probably 100 different adorable expressions by him alone!

Here are just a few of my favorites. If you have a few minutes and have an interest, feel free to look through all 192 of them here!

Photography Fail

One thing that I've completely failed to do in the last few months is practice my photography skills. I've busted out the camera a few times here and there, but I haven't had time to plan actual photo sessions, which is really what I'd like to practice! This is of course partially due to the winter--it's nearly impossible to do photo sessions outside in Kansas in December/January/February/March. Now that April is here, I can finally start scheduling some practice sessions! I've got a session for some engagement pictures for our friends Mike and Tiffany on the calendar already, and I've talked to several other friends who are interested in doing spring sessions as well. I'm not sure that I could ever make a career out of photography, and I certainly don't feel ready to charge anyone money for my pictures, but I still love the idea of doing photo sessions for fun!

About the only time I attempted to take a few decent pictures over the winter was last month during a day with my little friend Eli. I brought my camera to his house thinking we might have some decent light in front of a window, but since it turned out to be a cloudy day the light inside wasn't really very good at all. I got a few shots that were cute, but overall I didn't feel like the "shoot" was very successful! It's kind of fun to look back on the pictures though, mostly because Eli has changed so much since last month! Since then he's had his first haircut, and his new blond curls are taking over the dark hair he had when he was born, which has finally almost all grown out!

Although the quality/photography isn't great, I thought at least his parents might enjoy a few quick pics of Elijah!

That's "Owl" Theme and We're Sticking To It

This afternoon I finished editing and uploading the plethora of pictures from Leigh Ann's shower on Sunday, and I realized once I had uploaded them all that there wasn't any reason I needed to wait until they were finished to blog about the event. In my mind I guess I imagined putting the pictures into a slideshow on the blog. Now that I realize there are 111 pictures in the bunch, I'm thinking that probably only Leigh Ann herself and a few of our other friends who were there would probably be interested in that many pictures! If you get the urge though and want to see all of the food, decorations, gifts, guests and the game, please feel free to check the full album out here.

When my friends Melissa, Ellen, Corrie and I first got together to discuss the planning of Leigh Ann's shower, Mel came up with the great idea of using an owl theme, partially because Leigh Ann had recently picked out some baby bedding with owls, and partially because her husband Nate recently finished his doctorate in the English department and is a literary brainiac. We thought everyone bringing a book for baby braniac's library would go along well with the wise owl theme. Once we had the theme picked out we began to go a little crazy with it! Later Melissa found out Leigh Ann had changed her mind on the bedding, but the owl themed baby shower was already well on its way!

At our planning meeting, I volunteered to plan the menu, for which I chose foods that were either bird/tree related or in the color of the green/pink/brown/orange invitations we picked out. I made a fruit plate, a veggie tray, some little bird nest egg salads, ham asparagus roll-ups, spinach/artichoke dip on a tree shaped platter with a rye bread trunk, and some little bird seed snacks that are Chad's new favorite snack at our house! Melissa made festive little labels for all the food, Corrie ordered some adorable little cakes to match the invites, and Ellen made some awesome punch and bought colorful flowers to decorate her lovely home perfectly. Here are just a few of my favorite pics of the decor and food from the day.






The other thing that I had so much fun doing for the shower was making a shower game, even though none of us are big baby shower game people and weren't even sure we wanted to have one. I played a similar game when at my friend Karen's baby shower just a couple of weekends before, and it just seemed too perfect for the theme--and it actually seemed like something Leigh Ann might enjoy! I went online and found pictures of 20 famous people when they were babies, and then I printed out all their pictures onto tree branches (which I scanned from the invites) and pasted them into a tree trunk on poster board. Because I'm not very artistic, my tree ended up looking like the Washington Monument, but whatever. I put the celebrity's names in a list and numbered the pictures so that the guests could match the names to the numbers, and I think most people enjoyed it. Even if they didn't enjoy it, at least it wasn't ridiculously cheesy like so many baby shower games! It took me almost an entire day to find the pictures and make the tree, but I had a fun time doing it!

I'm hoping that all of Sunday's guests enjoyed the food and festivities as well as showering the lovely Leigh Ann and baby W with gifts and good wishes. It might not have lived up to the most amazing baby shower that Leigh Ann planned for our friend Amy a year ago, but with our four brains working together, I think we were able to come pretty close!

Bieberrific Birthday

Today is my amazing friend Cara's birthday, and even though I sent her a Jib Jab card and left her a message on Facebook and sent her a text, I still have to wish her a very happy birthday on the blog tonight. Cards, texts and other messages just don't cut it when you have a friend who is such an inspiration to so many people in so many ways. In the last couple of years, our friend Cara has handled the adversities of life with incredible grace, poise, maturity, faith and godliness--and she's not even 30 years old yet! All my other birthday wishes didn't seem adequate for such an amazing person, and my Jib Jab card certainly didn't seem adequate since I couldn't find an appropriate card that I could stick her head onto. Since I didn't have the perfect card, I decided to make her a special music video instead. I can now say I've watched my first ever Justin Bieber video. It's kind of appropriate since Cara's still a youngin' herself!

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Happy birthday, Cara! :)

Decompression

This evening Chad and I are just laying here lounging with our laptops, and I'm definitely enjoying the time to decompress a little. This might have been evident by my lack of blogging, but the last week was a busy one, and I'm definitely relieved that it's behind me. Since my last post just over a week ago, my schedule has included lots of activities that aren't part of my normal routine as chief homemaker. We've taken our nephews sledding and hosted them for a sleepover, I've started a new small group at a new church, we've taken all the dogs to the vet, I've been to my nephew's basketball game in Kansas City, and I've helped to plan and host a baby shower for my friend Leigh Ann, for which I made almost all the food. I think this was all complicated by the fact that I still did my volunteer shift at the food pantry, still made my regular weekly trip to Topeka, spent my regular afternoon with my baby friend Eli, had a medicated dog who needed to go out every couple of hours, a crazy dog who needed to be re-crate trained (more on that later) and a sick husband whose congested snoring didn't allow for much sleep on my part. Whew. Now that I write it all down, I understand why I'm a little pooped!

This week I'm hoping to get caught up on my sleep and my blogging! More posts coming soon!

Abe

On Friday Chad and I went to KC to visit our friends Vikkie and Brett and their newest bundle of joy, Abram Reo. Our intention was to bring the new parents a home cooked dinner, but since Chad had a hankering for Oklahoma Joe's, we ended up bringing them restaurant food instead. We can hardly resist OK Joe's when we're in the general vicinity, and thankfully Vikkie and Brett like it too, so hopefully they didn't mind too much.

Really there's no other point to this story except that it was great to hang out with these fun friends we don't get to see enough, and it was so fun to meet their adorable little son, who was less than two weeks old. I had a blast taking pictures of his perfect little face and could have done it for hours if Chad hadn't eventually dragged me away. The pictures would have been tons better if I'd had some natural light, but there are still a few that were pretty cute. Maybe Vikkie will let me come back sometime soon during the day when the light is better and have a practice photo session with Abe and his big brother Hutch (whose birthday is today--happy birthday, Hutch!), who was at Grandpa's house on Friday. Until then, here are just a few pictures of cute little Abram!

White Elephant 2010

One of our friends from our small group reminded me last week that I hadn't shared any pics from our annual white elephant gift exchange this year. Our group's Christmas party is such a wonderful tradition that I love going to and I love blogging about, which is obvious since I've blogged about it for the last 4 years in a row. Although I'm obviously a little late this year, I didn't want to break my white elephant blogging streak!

Our friends Pat and Kristin hosted the party this year, and as usual, we had a ridiculous amount of yummy food. After we all stuffed ourselves while socializing (or maybe I'm the only one who stuffed myself) we got to the main event of the evening, which was of course the gift exchange. Brian and LaRisa were attending their very first small group Christmas this year, so we had explained to them earlier in the week that they were to give some item from their house that they wanted to get rid of. We strongly encourage the gifting of crap at this particular party.

Although Charlie and Danny were attending their second Christmas party this year, we should have reminded them of our gift exchange rules as well, since for the second year in a row, Danny has given the most ridiculously awesome item that everyone starts stealing immediately. Last year it was the paintball gun; this year he gave an electronic drum set (which I totally wanted) with a pair of nunchucks with a pair of tickets to a KU basketball game! Apparently they had received the tickets as a gift but couldn't go, so they just stuck them with this already awesome gift that was supposed to suck!

Brian opened the super gift first, and you can see how excited he was--and that's before he knew the box contained basketball tickets as well! The very next person stole it from him, and then lucky for him, his wife LaRisa stole it for the final allowed steal! I haven't asked if they've actually used the drums, but I know they were thrilled to go to the KU game!



Probably the next coolest gift was this really nice serving set with a pitcher and four glasses. Clearly I was surprised to get something so nice in this gift exchange, and obviously LaRisa and Cara think it's pretty neat too! Unfortunately Kristin stole the set immediately, but I'm guessing she'll let me borrow it sometime if I need to.



There were some other pretty awesome gifts, but in a while elephant awesome sort of way and not in an awesome awesome sort of way. For example, we had this lovely pink rose pillow that Cara so craftily made from an old prom dress. Of course it was perfect for Chad, since everyone knows if there are five words that fit my husband, they are lovely, pink, rose, prom and dress. Ha--that's just a little joke. :)






We also had this incredibly hideous Tiffany & Co. lamp. Um, yeah. That's a light up mermaid. Pretty awesome. Beth and James actually received that as a serious gift at some point!


There were obviously tons of other great gifts too, but they weren't all instant classics like these! As always, we had lots of laughs and tons of fun with these wonderful friends at Christmas.

Baby Kate

During the last couple of days when I wasn't enjoying the company of our lovely houseguests Jake and Amber, I was busy editing the pictures from my first newborn photo session from earlier in the week. My friend Megan and her husband Chad had a beautiful baby girl a few days before Christmas, and since they hadn't scheduled any professional pictures of dear little Kate, I asked if I could come over and practice photographing their first born. Megan was kind enough to allow me to use her beautiful daughter as a guinea pig, since the few things I knew about infant sessions were from websites and not from actual experience!

Let me first just say that I have a whole new appreciation for the amazing talent of my friend Kelly--as if I didn't already idolize her photography skills. I mean just look at these pictures of newborns she's done. They're phenomenal, and I have no idea how she makes it look so easy. After looking back at her pictures, I don't necessarily feel great about my own, but hopefully my so-so pictures for Megan and Chad will still give them a little joy and give me a few shots for my practice portfolio!

The session didn't exactly go as I'd imagined, I guess because I thought Kate would be a lot more sleepy and posable than she actually was. She didn't really have an interest in being placed into strange and unusual places or positions, so we weren't able to be as creative as I'd hoped. Much of the time she literally had one eye open and on me, like she was very suspicious of what I was doing and why. It was too funny. She was so adorable and so alert and aware for only being 8 days old! It took a little more time and patience than I imagined, but we eventually got a few decent shots, although not in all of the outfits and poses we'd hoped for!

Before I share the full group of pictures from the session, I just have to share one small set that I just loved so much I turned them into an animated image. It's not so much that these were such terrific pictures of Kate, but I just loved the way she went from being clearly frustrated and uncomfortable to calm and peaceful in just seconds from the soothing touch and voice of her Momma. Megan is such a super mom already!


The full slideshow is probably entirely too long, I know, but I just have such a hard time deleting pictures after a session. I got this one down to about 65 pictures or so, which is pretty good considering I took over 200 pics and then edited those down to just over 100, including some copies with special Photoshop finishes that didn't make it into the slideshow. Many of those that did make it aren't really keepers, but I just thought some of the goofy and sad faces are just too precious not to share. She is an adorable little baby, although I'm sure my pictures don't really do her justice!

Nebraska

This weekend we made a quick getaway trip to our neighboring state of Nebraska, where we met our good friends Jake and Amber and visited the college town of Lincoln for the first time. While the primary purpose of the trip was seeing our favorite Nebraskans, we also went to see our Jayhawks play the Cornhuskers in football. The game left a little to be desired (more on that later), but we had a nice time with Amber and Jake and their good friends (and our friends too) Amy and Brian, who we met up with after the game.

After our friends left Lincoln this morning, the highlight of my day was actually taking pictures in the really cool Haymarket district of Lincoln and the UNL campus. While I didn't have the lens I wanted and the light was entirely too bright for good pictures, I still had fun and got a few good shots. I didn't take the time to edit many of them and I uploaded them in a small file size so the quality isn't great, but I still want to share a little of the beauty of Lincoln!

Kristin's Fall Show

When I wrote about quitting my job a couple of weeks ago I mentioned wanting to use the creative side of my brain for a change. Although I didn't really do anything creative in my first week off, I did find some inspiration by spending a couple of afternoons with my friend Kristin. I've talked about my talented friend and her amazing jewelry many times in the last few years, but I have to blog about her once again because I never cease to be amazed by her fantastic creations. I've been helping her to get ready for her fall show (which is Saturday), and I can't even begin to explain how much incredible STUFF she will have at her show! Along with amazing bracelets, necklaces and earrings, Kristin also makes wool and wire flower pins (at right) and wool purses--all made from recycled wool sweaters. She also makes smaller wool flower hat pins and flower hair bands with interchangeable flowers! As if that isn't enough, she also has hand-painted mugs and embroidered wool pillows. Seriously, she absolutely amazes and inspires me!

I obviously love Kristin's designs and believe wholeheartedly in her talent, so I'm excited to do some online marketing for her now that I'm unemployed. My first project was making her a Facebook page today, which will hopefully eventually have lots of pictures of her jewelry and accessories. If the link doesn't work, you can log on to Facebook and search for "Something Beautiful by Kristin Campbell" to become a fan or like her! I've also set up a Facebook event for her show tomorrow if you're interested in going.

If you aren't on Facebook and would like to attend Kristin's show, here are the logistics.


Saturday, November 13 · 4:30pm - 8:00pm

Point B Dance Studio
3115 W 6th St Suite H (east of Sonic on 6th Street)
Lawrence


I hope everyone in the Lawrence area can make it. If not, I'll be helping Kristin with another show Friday in KC, so put it on your calendar! I promise you won't be disappointed!

First Photo Session

Saturday afternoon I had the pleasure and honor of taking some family photos of my friends Pat and Kristin and their little baby boy Elijah. I was super excited about it but also a little nervous, because even though I've taken a million photos in the last few years, I had yet to take any pictures for anyone other than myself. Thankfully though, my subjects were beautiful, the weather was perfect, the setting was lovely, and the late afternoon lighting was great! Everything came together and my first photo session actually went pretty well!

I did a little editing of pictures Saturday night and then some more editing Sunday evening, and although I might still have a little more editing to do, I wanted to at least share the ones I'd picked out so far. I think they turned out pretty good! I put them into a slideshow using Windows Moviemaker, but I didn't have any tunes that seemed like a good match, so I ended up using a random sample song that was on the hard drive of my computer which is totally lame. I need some good ideas for slideshow music!

I had a great time on my first photo shoot and hope to take some more pictures for friends in the near future!!

Happy 1st!

Our little friend Violet had a birthday party just a few days before I left for my trip to DC, and we had a lovely time celebrating with her family and friends on a beautiful fall day in a local park. Her parents, our good friends Robyn and Dan, provided tons of great food for everyone and we had a fun time watching Vi enjoy her first cake. She is such a happy, agreeable and easygoing baby--one of those babies that makes everyone to have them! We were a little bummed because we had to leave before all the presents were opened, but I got a couple of cute cake shots at least. I think this was my favorite!

Stress and Birthdays

The last week has been quite stressful, and my body let me know that it wasn't appreciating the extra stress when I woke up Saturday morning with a sore throat and a fever. I wasn't really surprised under the circumstances. After receiving the terrible news on Thursday and subsequently worrying about my grieving friend nonstop, I could feel the illness coming on by Friday afternoon. Then after a super busy day at work I ended up staying at the office until after 7 trying to finish up a big project, which certainly didn't help things. Even downing a bunch of vitamin C Friday night and going to bed early didn't keep me from having to cancel my training walks with friends on Saturday morning. After sleeping most of Saturday away I managed to make it to our friend Mike's 40th birthday party for a couple of hours that evening. On Sunday I tried to rest as much as possible too, but that day we actually had another birthday party to go to--this one for our 1-year-old friend Violet!

Tonight the birthday theme continued when I went over to my friend Melissa's with a few other friends from work to bring her dinner and wine for her birthday. It was hard to call this one a birthday celebration though, since obviously Mel just lost her husband 7 days ago. There were a lot more tears and hugs at this party than candles and presents, unfortunately. The sadness and grief have been so emotionally draining, I can't even begin to imagine how Melissa and her family feel.

Although I've felt a little better every day since Saturday (is this only Tuesday??), I would like to have spent more of Sunday and yesterday evening lounging around and trying to heal. Unfortunately that wasn't possible since I had lots of packing and preparing to do, given that I'm flying out tomorrow evening to Columbus, Ohio, where my dad will pick me up. As most of my friends and family know, the following day we'll drive together to Washington, DC, where we'll be participating together in the newly titled Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure! I'm super excited!

Now if I can just make it through one more day of stress at work, I'll be free to enjoy a relaxing vacation with my Pop--that is if you consider walking 60 miles in a weekend relaxing!

Sadness Beyond Words

This morning I received such horrific and unfathomable news it still seems absolutely surreal. I'm completely overwhelmed with sadness and yet part of me can't even wrap my brain around what's happened. Yesterday afternoon my good friend Melissa learned that her husband Gavin died while hiking in the Grand Canyon with some friends. I can't even express my sorrow for my friend and their two-year-old son Liam.

Although the final cause of death has not yet been published, initial indications are that Gavin died from heat-related illness. His death seems even more unreal since less than three weeks ago we were celebrating his 30th birthday with a bunch of friends at the bar he owned here in Lawrence. Although I'd known Gavin casually through Melissa for a couple of years, his birthday was really one of the first times I'd had an extended conversation with him. He was intelligent, funny, kind and down to earth, and he was loved by many, many people here in Lawrence. Gavin was involved in many community groups for which he volunteered his time and was a wonderful husband and father. He will be greatly missed.

Please say a prayer for my friend Melissa and their precious little guy Liam, and remember to hug your loved ones every chance you get. Life is just too short, and you never know what might happen tomorrow.