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September 25th, 2007 - High Contrast Closeups
While we were in Banff, the kids were playing in a grassy field near Cascade Gardens. They were running down the hill and jumping over a row of rocks. After they’d jump, the kids would run up really close to me just a giggling! I had my macro lens on so I was able to capture closeups of their smiling faces. To add to the fun, I played with the images in Lightroom for a fun high contrast look!
Life is slowly starting to gain some normacly, I look forward to having time again to take pictures just for fun!
September 22nd, 2007 - Autumn in the Mountains
We had a day off on Saturday so we decided to take a day trip into Banff. We’ve been admiring the mountains from our vantage point here in Calgary, and they now have snow on the top of them again, but this week the colours started turning on the trees. I thought it would be a beautiful weekend to go explore Banff!
Of course with my bum foot, we couldn’t do much in the way of exploring, but it was wonderful to get away for the day and just enjoy each other in total relaxation! We went to Bow Falls and then explored the Cascade Gardens at Canada Place. It was a perfect day, we love the mountain scenery!
The beautiful Rocky Mountain Vista:
Canada Place, Banff:
Bow River in Banff:
The Kiddos having fun at Cascade Gardens:
September 22nd, 2007 - A Job Offer that Works!!!!
We have been swamped at work, I have been working very long hours, as have all the other photographers. It just seems like we can’t catch up! This week my boss asked if Brian would be interested in coming in and helping out on a part time basis! Brian loved the idea, I loved the idea and best of all, we have the flexibility to work around the kid’s schedule!!!! My boss doesn’t mind having the kids at the studio, but if Bri’s hours there are regular, we want to look into getting a college student to help us out.
So finally, its all coming together! I set myself some goals at the end of Hallmark, one of which was to be working side by side with my hubby in two years……..we’ve hit that goal in three months! I’m thrilled and best of all, we are really enjoying ourselves at the studio, we are both doing creative work and it fits well with our family!
Now if we could just get this house settled!!!!!
September 22nd, 2007 - A Tumble
So as if life wasn’t interesting enough already, I had to go and add to it. Sunday night, I ran downstairs to check my email quick before bed, I went down the narrow stairs in the dark and somehow managed to wind up laying at the bottom of the stairs! My foot felt like it was on fire! Brian managed to get me back upstairs to our room as I couldn’t put any weight on my foot! The next morning, Bri took me to the medi clinic because I couldn’t walk at all! I went in for Xray’s and haven’t heard anything back so I’m guessing it isn’t broken, but we had to invest in a pair of crutches for me to hobble around on. I’m not much of an invalid so by the next day, I’d discovered a way to hobble without hurting my foot and not using my crutches! A week after my tumble, I can finally fit my foot back into my shoe, but I can’t tie it up!
Hopefully soon, my foot heals because its really difficult to race around the studio with all its obstacles of lights and sets, let alone trying to photograph something with only one leg that works!
September 14th, 2007 - Photography…..could it be any better?
Its been hard to watch the calender over the past month and a half because it is the anniversary of our trip to Hallmark. I remember the landmark days so well. Leaving our beloved in house, arriving in MA, the first day of school and then everyday after that when I fell in love with photography even more! I’m watching Hallmark’s website and see what the new class is doing and as soon as I see the picture on the front page, I am thrown instantly back into my own experience….holding that medium format camera for the first time, my first field trip, the first guest speaker…it has been overwhelming to stand back and look at where we are now! I am making a career out of photography. Everyday, I get to live and breathe photography. That’s really cool!
So after a frustrating day of still tentative daycare, or a day of uncertainty with our life here, I only have to go to work and have a great shoot to be reassured that it has all been worth it. Now what will really be icing on the cake is if we can make it work so my husband can pursue his passion now so that we both get to wake up in the morning and say with a smile “I get to go to work today!”.
September 14th, 2007 - The job offers start to come in…
Now that the kids are in school, Brian has been starting to work on getting a job. This is where frustration is really coming into play again. We have after school care for all the kids now, but the after school care won’t pick up little man, so I’ll have to leave work and take him to his after school care, then go back to work. While I don’t mind doing this as I love spending time with my babies, it does make it difficult to coordinate shoots at work. And, as with anything creative, the project takes a dive when you have to walk away from it for awhile and then come back to it. What to do, what to do?
With the cost of daycare, Brian would have to make an extrodinary amount of money for it to be worth it. If he is working, he’ll have to take the bus while I take care of getting the kids to school which means I’ll lose up to 2.5 hours a day of work. By the time we factor everything in, we’re losing money if he works! Isn’t that ridiculous?
So, now the question is, what on earth do we do???? Sometimes I wish life came with a road map, telling us what way to turn after reaching such a point. In the past year, we’ve had to make so many major decisions and with each one comes all the doubts of did we do the right thing? What is our next step? Where do we go from here?
We didn’t give up everything to come out and struggle again. We have to find a way to work it, right now, we just aren’t sure what that way is yet. We need a map!
September 14th, 2007 - The tears begin….
Kalla started preschool after labour day weekend. Brian went and spent some time with her at school, and they had visited a couple of times the week before. When Brian went to leave, Kalla clung to him sobbing. He finally convinced her to play and he came to sit iwth me a work. I don’t know who was sadder, Bri or Kalla! After spending the summer together, and then having the last few weeks together with just the two of them, they were so used to their time together! Bri went back after a couple of hours to pick her up and Kalla had been sobbing again.
She is now on her second week of school and things are not improving. It is breaking our hearts to have our little girl so upset with us leaving her. Her teachers say she does join in and have fun after a little while but she still breaks down with tears. I hope she adjusts soon because all of our hearts are breaking for this sad little miss! She always has a smile on her face so its hard to take the tears!
September 14th, 2007 - A Weekend Escape…..
I have been working pretty steady, with a lot of hours for the past month. I had a family wanting a portrait done so we decided to take off for the weekend and go to the farm. I wanted the kids to experience harvest because they had never seen it! We’ve always visited in the summer, before the combines come out! Kadin is fascinated with farming and I wanted all of my kids to experience my favorite time on the farm. I remember with great fondness of Uncle Art coming out to help drive truck, and him and Grandpa and Dad standing around in the field eating supper discussing the harvest. I loved sitting in the middle of a giant swath with my supper and the awesome view of the farmland around me. I remember the smell of harvest and how I loved seeing the grain pouring off the combine into the trucks and the sound of the augers putting the grain away in the graineries. I wanted to show all of this to the kids and Brian.
We told the kids we were going up to the farm for the weekend later in the week because I hadn’t been sure if I could get the time off. Kalla was so excited and yelled out “but we have to get a moving truck!”. She was so disappointed when she realized we were coming back to Calgary, we were just going for a visit. She really wants to move in with her Poppa so they can share cookies all the time!
The whole drive up the kids were so excited to see the combines crisscrossing the swaths in the fields along the highway. We arrived at the farm at midnight and headed straight to sleep but were awoken by a massive rain storm in the middle of the night. The next morning, we got up to everything being soaked! 
There would be no harvesting today!
Instead, the boys all headed into town to work on the house, Poppa gave Kadin a hammer and some nails, he was in sheer heaven! The girls got to go shopping and then I spent an enjoyable day snuggled up with my girls and a good book! The next day, it was still too wet to harvest so off the boys went again to build the house. The girls and I enjoyed dancing to the music on CMT! After lunch, the boys came home and everybody but me went picking chokecherries (ok that is not a fond memory of my youth, I opted to remain with my book and nap!) The kids had a blast watching grandma make jam the next morning and after a feast of pancakes with Auntie Heather and Auntie Norma, we decided to head out for Calgary.
I was disappointed as it was still too wet for Dad to combine, but he took us all out to the field anyways so the kids could have a ride in the combine. The kids were very impressed with how big it was and they loved helping Poppa bring the grain back to test. It was still wet so with no hopes of seeing harvest, it was time to get in the van and head back to Calgary.
We left early in the day so we could take our time and enjoy our trip. We stopped and ate lunch out, a very rare treat! And then we stopped in Drumheller at the museum. We walked around outside and stepped inside to poke around the gift shop. Kadin got a glimpse of a huge dinosaur inside the museum and so b