A Beautiful Day

Last month, my sister and her husband reunited, and their small family is beautifully happy. Today I am sharing some of the pictures from their incredibly perfect day. 21 November 2012.

Chocolate cake, awesome icing, chocolate- covered strawberries.

A simple bouquet of cream roses, wrapped with ribbon and lace.

Her ring is gorgeous.

and the veil was pretty cute, too... if I may say so myself.

just beautiful

The baby's lace dress to match mommy

mother and daughter. You tell them to look into each others eyes and smile, and you're bound to get some natural smiles/laughs due to the awkward situation. I'm tricky. It works. You just have to wait to click at the right moment.

The ceremony begins... Her facial expressions kill me!

I love everything about this shot. So much love.

Just after the kiss.

Husband and wife.

The family. I love how the sun shoots through the fence... even if they look like American Gothic.

I think this is my favorite shot. 

With so much divorce and families being destroyed, it was such a blessing and a miracle to witness a family reuniting. 

more camping

Here, again, are some pictures from our camping trip at Arkabutla on November 17th.

Pictures of people coming soon...

Camping at Arkabutla

Here to share a few other pictures from our family campout. A weekend of relaxation, resting, walking, nature, and photography is a weekend of BLISS.

I should definitely edit some of these (all of these), but I have little skill and less time. Sorry if I hurt your eyes.

Promises, Schlomises

I know I said I'd show pictures of the invitations next, but I have yet to do an invitation photo shoot, so I'm sharing some interesting finds we happened upon while we went camping with Dad and the kids. The lake (Arkabutla Lake) has been pretty low, and it's been getting lower, so we had the opportunity to explore what is typically below the water. People have lots of fun throwing, tossing, dropping things in that lake. Here is what we found below lake level:

a huge group of feathers. so pretty. cool, blue coloring under a shadow. 

took great efforts, including a red extender (scarf) with a strong hero (dad) on the other side of it to help me reach.

2 golf balls. and a fly on this one. Thanks, Fly, for waiting patiently for the picture.

glass bottle. oh, the recreational activities people engage in while camping. and I thought people just made s'mores.

part of a bowling ball. the hero took it home as a souvenir.

another glass bottle.

animal prints. they were up earlier than we were.

spark plug. the hero had a cool (made up) story to go with that.

grasshopper. nervous with his first photo shoot, but cooperative.

small pancreas, maybe? 

finally, found a hero and his shadow.

Handmade Instruments

I just started my first year teaching elementary music, and I have had so much fun helping the students discover the many avenues of music. Each day we sing songs, listen to music, play instruments, and dance on the dance floor. We learn the basics of music theory and music history, and I've realized that the more fun I have, the more fun the students have.

The most recent project we've accomplished is making our own instruments. All grades K-5 took part in this activity, and the success rate was higher than the average homework turn-in rate! Yay for music! With our handmade instruments we sang and played along to "Old MacDonald Had a BAND!" We marched around the classroom. We played a rhythm guessing game, and we did some rhythm sight-reading. The kids loved it, and the noise was worth the experience!!

The guitars were pretty dang creative. We also had some awesome drums and shakers. Above you saw a harp as well. Below is a finger piano made out of bobby pins on wood. My favorite was an instrument called a drumbone. It was something the Blue Man Group would have on stage. Sorry I don't have an awesome picture or video to go with that.

Below is a sneak peek of things to come- my most incredibly professional-looking project ever!