Wednesday, March 13, 2013

January-March, Basketball, Scuba, Baby Kitties, SLC, exc.


Holy hanna I'm a terrible blogger. I don't think I've posted anything since at least December! 

Would it help if I said I've been a little preoccupied? 
In my last post I said I had 3 weddings in December.


Since then, I've had another 5. 


And I've booked another 15 or so

Which of course is AMAZING! It seriously blows my mind every time another person contacts me and trusts me with one of the biggest days of their life. I still wonder if I'm even qualified to do what I do sometimes. :) 

We also moved to our new place which is awesome! It seriously feels so good, not only to have a change but to be out of our creepy neighborhood! Our new place is within walking distance to a theater and the mini golf course and we are getting pretty excited for summer and cruising around our new place!


But anyways, onto the crazy catch-up posts that we all know and love! 

Be warned all who enter here, WAY too many pictures coming up... 


OK, first off, Christmas was awesome! We're always WAY too spoiled when it comes to Christmas, and this year, I got Clay tickets to a Jazz game! We went in early January and it was a blast! We won! 

Here we are... enjoying the game

Someday I'll help Clay remember how to smile like a real person. For posterity's sake. 


I was pretty proud of the seats I found if I do say so myself. 


Before the game, we went to Market Street Grill (one of my favorites) and Clay got a Prime Rib the size of his face. 


Then, at the end of January came one of my most favorite things... SCUBA DIVING in PALAU!!!! 

Seriously, words cannot describe the joy that came from this trip. It was so amazing. I have a blog post HERE with all of my edited underwater pics (that I'm sure most, if not all of you have seen by now) so I'll just keep the above water pics here. 

Here are some artsy shots from our first day there...



One of the 5 meals we were given on the many plane rides there. If you can't tell, this was BBQ chicken (I sure couldn't) But the salad was pretty good. 


Our first day! 2 of my most favorite people! (with a 3rd cut off on the side of the pic... why yes, I am a photographer...why do you ask? ) 


Let me describe the trip for you a little bit. Our little group (dad, uncle Neil, uncle David, and I) were usually the first ones up. We'd go sit out on the top deck with some hot chocolate and watch the sun rise, then we'd go diving. We'd get back from Dive 1, eat breakfast, dive again 2, come back and eat lunch, go dive again 3, come back and grab a snack (brownies and a smoothie) go dive again 4, come hang out for a bit, go do the night dive 5, come back and eat dinner, then off to bed (where dad and I would watch WWII in the Pacific History channel documentaries). 

So basically, life was perfect for an entire week

It was HEAVEN. And the people I got to go with really are some of my favorite people. We just laugh the ENTIRE time we're above water, and enjoy everything under the water the rest of the time. :) 

My Dive buddies... 


Yellow Beach. This is where the Marines landed to take Peleliu from the Japanese during WWII. So pretty


We did the WWII tour that we did last time and it was crazy to see how much had changed! (A typhoon had come through about a month before so a TON of the trees were knocked down) 

Japanese "Toy" Tank


Japanese Headquarters, all bombed out


These torpedoes were a new addition



Japanese Power Plant


I call this one, Dad and bike


Me and Dad of course! Love him


Japanese Plane



Part of a US Tank


Our view for the week... 


And our trusty chase boat (complete with our Pepper's Flag! (not seen here))


Surface interval time. Breathing off some nitrogen. 


Words really can't describe that trip. The food was amazing, the diving was awesome, the weather was beautiful, we fed lemon sharks off the back of the boat at night and watched the blacktip sharks during the day. And we just told stories (I listened mostly) and laughed.

 It definitely made me do a lot of thinking though. I love shooting weddings, but I LOVE shooting underwater. That really is what I'd like to be doing all of the time if I could. So I've decided that I'm going to start practicing doing what I love whenever I have the opportunity. If you start working in one direction, opportunities will present themselves for you so that's what I'm going to do! Wish me luck... 


Well, after the trip (and convincing Clay that I wasn't going to leave him for 2 weeks with only $30 in our bank account again) I got back to working! I was in desperate need of a hair cut though (I don't want to look like a scrub in front of my brides!) and this is the end result!


Blunt bangs all the way baby! I LOVE this hair cut! One of my most favorites to date! 


So, I was fresh off an awesome dive trip and had lots and lots of work lined up, in an awesome new house, and TONS of editing to do, and a husband that was at school all day long. So of course, I think to myself, can we add another element of awesomeness to our already crazy hectic and awesome life? 

I had been stalking KSL classifieds, looking at cats for MONTHS at this point. Clay and I had talked about getting a cat but nothing too serious. It was about a week or 2 after getting back from my trip and I decided to take a break from editing to look at the classifieds for fun again... and look at what I found... 


I was COMPLETELY smitten. I have always wanted a tabby kitten, but KSL was full of lots of adult cats or cats over a year old and Clay and I really hadn't talked about getting a cat seriously anyway. These little guys were the perfect age (6 weeks old) and were FREE! 

I sent Clay a picture of the ad and asked him what he thought about it. After texting back and forth about it for a little while, we decided we should contact the lady and ask her a few questions. She told us she had the kittens still but that if we wanted one we needed to tell her ASAP since she'd had a few people contact her already (Her ad had been up about 20 minutes at this point)apparently kittens are in high demand.  

Clay got home from work, we discussed it a little bit more and decided we should go for it! The next morning, we headed to Petsmart and got all the cat supplies we thought we would need, then we headed up to Pocetello to pick out our new little kitten! 

And we ended up with little Baby Tonks... 

Isn't she the sweetest thing you have EVER seen? She has tabby stripes on her arms, legs, and face, but she has these weird little orange spots in her undercoat, and of course her awesome orange stripe on her head. 


She looks TINY in these pictures now! Just bringing her home! 



Now that we've had her for about a month, we have discovered she is basically the most awkward cat ever. Which is perfect for two of the world's most awkward people! :)
She isn't too cuddly most of the time, but she does like to sleep with us at the foot of our bed... under the covers. 


She's also kind of a kleptomaniac. We first discovered this when we started finding her toy mice under the couch and bed in little piles. Then she started dragging off things like socks, watches, car keys, earrings, bras, stuff like that. It's pretty dang funny. 


She also likes to be as high up as she can. Which means she will climb up the clothes in our closet to get to the top shelf. She also likes to hang out on our shoulders, especially when I'm getting ready in the morning... 


She plays REALLY hard, then she sleeps really hard. 


And we love her to pieces. She really is our furry little baby, and it is so fun having a little shadow when you're at the house by yourself. 


Well, after getting baby Tonks, we didn't really have much money for Valentines so we didn't do anything too big. We got each other valentines cards, and I made chocolate fondu... 


And Clay's favorite bacon chicken and rice! 


And other then that, we have been hanging with Baby Tonks! Prepare for an overload of Tonks pictures (she is our baby after all!) 

Here she is, making off with one of my earrings... 


Snoozing in a cute fashion


And one of my favorite things she does! When she gets REALLY into playing, she has these baby kitten growls that are SO funny. And when she gets REALLY REALLY into playing, her ears will go flat against her head, like so... 


She's pretty intimidating I guess :) 

The other thing she does that we haven't been able to get on camera yet is her ears will go all pointy, and her tail will get puffy and she does this creepy crab hobble towards you. She seriously looks possessed but it is freaking funny to watch. 

She loves the orange chair in our front room... 


And she loves distracting me when I'm trying to edit my photos



And biting my fingers


Clay sent me this. He said this happened when he told Tonks he had to study... 


Sitting on my shoulder while I cook dinner. She's definitely going to have bad habits when she gets big.


She loves plastic bags. Especially when she can get inside them


On top of the clothes in the closet


Enjoying some orange soda


And sleeping on my back


Trying to steal Clay's pizza


And my favorite pic of Tonks EVER! So glad I happened to have my camera laying around to catch this cute pic. 


She's really been loving having the windows open lately! It was 65 degrees in Logan today! 


and since she's a cat, she loves drinking whatever we're drinking. 


And of course, she's always cute when she sleeps. :) Can you tell we like her a little bit? 


We also had an exciting celebration about a week ago! Clay and I have now been married for 2 whole years!!! Crazy right? We celebrated by buying anniversary presents for each other and going out to eat at one of our favorite places, Kabuki Japanese Steak House! Sushi for Clay, steak for me. Perfect date :) 

And of course I only took one picture... terrible


We've now arrived at our current week! Amazing! 
It's Clay's spring break right now, and since we're poor we didn't do anything too extreme but we've definitely been having fun! 

On Sunday we drove down to SLC with our good buddies, Shawn and Camille and stayed at Shawn's house that night so that we could be close to SLC for our crazy day of FUN! 

We started the day with the zoo. We LOVE going to the zoo when it's a little bit colder since it definitely isn't crowded and the animals are awake and active! We loved the elephants... 


I could watch the seals for HOURS!



Snow Leopards close up! 


This monkey found his tail extremely interesting. 


Check out this BLUE monitor lizard! I just wanna cuddle him. 


Baby giraffe is always a crowd pleaser. 


Watching the seals again


After the zoo, we had lunch at this awesome pizza place called Stoneground that had the best tiramisu I have EVER had, then we headed over to the library and climbed to the very top to have a look. 


We tried to go see the mummy exhibit (but it was $25 a ticket and we were definitely on a limited budget) so we headed to the aquarium instead! On the way there, we stopped at ToysRUs since Camille had NEVER been! Can you believe that? (No pictures there I'm afraid) 

Then it was aquarium time! Shawn and Camille get up close and personal with the otters. 


A few aquarium residents... 



We got to pet the most friendly shark in the ENTIRE world. Seriously, it was coming out of the water it wanted attention so bad. Camille wasn't a fan. 



Clay's favorite, the penguins! 


Our only picture proving we matched each other that day... yep. We're awkward like that


GIANT arapima fish from River Monsters! 


one of my most favorite snakes ever, a green tree python


I definitely love lion fish

After the aquarium, we did something I've never done before and walked through IKEA, and it ended up being one of my favorite parts of the day! We just walked around, talking about what we liked and what we didn't and planning our future houses. One day... :) 


After IKEA, we ate at one of my new favorite restaurants, the Dodo! It was classy, casual, just the way we like it! And that was our crazy fun day!

And, to send you off, a pic of the two of us from epic date 2013!



Fhewww! Hopefully you lasted to the end of this post! I almost didn't make it myself! On my honor, I will try to post more often so this doesn't happen all the time! 
We have some fun things coming up soon so hopefully I'll have some things to blog about! Hope you all are enjoying the spring weather! 

XOXO