Anniversary & Start of Summer

We had our 14th anniversary on the 29th and to celebrate we took a helicopter ride on Friday and went to lunch.   The weather was awesome and so was the experience.  We flew from Boeing field to Snoqualmie Falls going over the LDS temple, Marisa's parent's house, my practice, the falls, the Space Needle along with Bellevue, Seattle, Microsoft and Ballard.

Falls

Space Needle

  

Stadiums

 

Snoqualmie Ridge where I work

My office

Pond's house

We went camping in the back yard over Memorial Day Weekend.  The kids loved building a fire adn sleeping outside.

The week before I was invited to go skiing on Lake Washington with a friend.   The water was pretty nice and his boat was competition certified so the wake was almost non-existent when we skied then pretty big to board.  The first picture is me doing a not so great back flip that ended up with a back spasm :-(  Feeling the age of 40 coming on fast...

I hadn't skied more than once in the past 10+ years and I felt like with the super small wake and the lifting I've been doing over the past year enabled me to ski at least twice as good as I ever have before.  It was awesome!

Some cute pictures I couldn't resist posting.

Caeden's pizza pinewood derby car with his "extra pepperoni" to make weight.

The Journey

Fourteen years ago today, I woke up on a beautiful sunny Seattle morning next to my dear friend Andrea and my mom said it was a perfect day to get married. It seemed like the extra push I needed since I was so freaking scared that I was making the wrong decision by listening to the Spirit and not my heart.

That day I felt calm and peaceful as I committed to be true and faithful to Carson for time and all eternity and I couldn't help but smile as I looked into his dark brown eyes.  It felt like coming home.

Looking back, the day of our wedding was like the eye of the storm.  Like "footprints in the sand" it was the day that Christ carried me.  Everything before and after was so hard!

When I first met Carson in October of 1998 I wrote in my journal that I felt like myself around him.

The comfortableness we had right from the start quickly turned into a strong friendship and also meant we didn't hold back our opinions and could argue about almost anything.  I knew within a few weeks that he was the man I was going to marry and I was terrified.  I was 19 and I wanted to be more grown-up, to know myself better, to be more experienced.  I liked him a lot but I was only starting to fall in love with him, a process that was hindered by all the arguing and stress over school and trying to do the right thing.  But every time I would start to freak out about it, I would say a prayer and I KNEW it was the right thing to do to marry him.  And even though we weren't desperately in love there was plenty of passion between us so we didn't want to wait too long and set a date for May 29th, 1999.

I thought once we were married that God would bless us with more love, patience and understanding and everything would be okay. Well, it took a while, but...

God blessed us with four insane (I mean active and impetuous) children and some huge setbacks in starting Carson's dental practice to teach us patience.

He blessed us with trials of multiple miscarriage, near financial ruin, a crisis of faith and the realization that my ADHD is affecting almost everything in our lives to teach us understanding.

And over the past 14 years we have learned to love each other deeply, to match the solid commitment that we've always had to our marriage and our family.  The picture is a little blurry, but THIS is my Carson.  This is the man I love with all my heart, the best friend I've ever had.  We still get so mad at each other sometimes and we still have so much to learn but I LOVE this wonderful man and I couldn't live without him.

Maybe that's what happens when a tornado meets a volcano, all I know is I love you too much to walk away though  :)

I love you Carson Calderwood!!!  Happy 14th Anniversary!

New lens

I've been wanting to get a better portrait lens for a long time.  I had the Canon 50 mm 1/1.8 II that was good, but knew I wasn't getting quite the bokeh effect that I wanted.  I had a hard time deciding between the 50 mm 1/1.2 and the 85 mm 1/1.2 that I got.  As soon as I got it I took some pix around the house and outside.  The depth of field wasn't as hard to work with as I feared. 

Here you can see the awesome aperture in action!

Here was my first try at getting the face in focus despite the shallow DOF.

Not everyone is as happy as I am to have the new lens!

In the next couple of shots you can see how it is a pretty fast lens and works well in action photography as well.