{ my first wedding }

I've been doing photography now for the last 6 or 7 months, and I'm absolutely LOVING IT! I've been mostly photographing families and couples, but this weekend I shot my first WEDDING!!! I can't even describe the amount of nervousness I had running through my body from the time I got off the plane in Seattle until I took those first few shots. Once I got going, I was a lot more relaxed, but I ran on adrenaline ALL DAY. I don't even think I ate anything for 8 or 9 hours straight....I was just going, going, going. But I had a blast! I was able to see my Mom, which is always a treat, and her and her friend, Patty, helped me a TON! I was so grateful that they were there. Note to self: never do a wedding all by myself...always have someone to help me. Anyway, I figured I would post a couple for you to see!

{ june fun }

It's the end of June, and it's been a while since I blogged. We have done a lot this month! And next month is going to be twice as busy. The beginning of the month we celebrated my birthday and our anniversary by going away for 2 nights...without the Berk. It was the first time that she was without at least one of us for a night, let alone two...but Grandma had everything covered while we were gone. We've went rock climbing a couple of times, which is a seriously good time. And since the weather has been nice, we've spent a lot more time outside. Which just happens to be one of Berkley's favorite places...outside anywhere. Yesterday we finally got some new pictures taken! It originally was going to be a photo shoot of just Berkley, but then I figured we should just do a family one, since we will all be there, and we haven't had family pictures for a while. (Grandma once again came to the rescue and took pictures of us). WELL...it ended up mainly being a Matt and Val photo shoot. We got some cute ones of Berkley, but after about 5 minutes she was done with it, and then we tried family pics...that was over in about 1 minute...so then it was just Matt and I. Berkley walked around for a few minutes, but then we remembered the otter pops we brought. The 2 we brought kept her occupied the rest of the time. It was so fun to just take pictures with Matt! We hadn't done that for a while.
At the moment I can't remember anything else we have done that would be of interest to my fellow bloggers. But hopefully there will be another post soon, about our wonderfully crazy and fun life!

{ french braids and amen }

Today was such a fun day with the Berk. She is starting to become so animated and spunky! She has now started demanding (yes, DEMANDING) breakfast immediately after she gets out of bed. Well, I wake up when she wakes up and I'm still not adjusted to cooking 2 minutes after I wake up. But that's what I did today. So, while I'm cooking her eggs (probably her favorite food, at the moment) I gave her some cheerios to keep her happy. She knows when her eggs are done and right when she sees me putting them on a plate she starts yelling for them. Like usual, I said, "Ok, time to say a prayer." And that didn't make her very happy. She started becoming more vocal that she wasn't getting her eggs immediately. But I just folded my arms, closed my eyes and said a quick prayer. About half way through she stopped talking, and when I said Amen and opened my eyes she had her arms folded and said, "AMA". IT WAS THE CUTEST! So I ran over to her and gave her a big hug and kiss and she seemed pretty pleased with herself.

Later in the morning I decided that I would try and french braid her hair for the first time. I had never attempted it before because 1. Her hair wasn't long enough and 2. because I thought I was just pushing my luck assuming that a 1 year old would sit still long enough for me to braid both sides. She is used to getting her hair done everyday, but it doesn't take that long. So I did it, and it wasn't perfect, but it sure looked cute!

We spent the rest of the day cleaning, playing, went on a walk, and even went over to the local fish hatchery and fed some fish. :)

{ oregon trip }

Well, last weekend Berkley and I went to OREGON! It was busy, fun, exhausting...you know all the feelings that come with going on vacation and working at the same time. We had so much fun though! Saw so many friends I haven't seen in a really long time, and that was amazing. My brother and his cute little family came up from California and that was SO fun! Berkley LOVES Lila and she pretty much just followed her around everywhere. Super Cute! I did some photo shoots while I was there too, which was a blast! As usual! You can see the pictures on my FB page or here: http:valoryjeanphotography.blogspot.com
I just have one shoot up on my blog from Oregon, but the rest will be up soon!

Here are a few pics from the trip: Mainly of Berkley and Lila. :) (GRRRR! Photobucket won't resize my pics right, so there aren't as many here! Sorry

Silly girl!

{ new diet }

SOOOOOOO...I have been having trouble losing my last 10 lbs, from the close to 40 lbs that I gained when I was pregnant with Berkley. I've exercised on and off...watched what I ate on and off...and just haven't really committed to anything for more than 2-4 weeks...If I did, I cheated a little bit in there sometime. I just seem to ALWAYS make exceptions. "Oh, it's so and so's birthday...I'll have a little cake." or "I hardly ever eat this, and I probably won't have it for a long time, I think I'll have seconds or thirds of it." It just always seems that I'm not totally committed and my will power has gone out the window. So now I'm trying a specific diet which is something I've never really done before. The nice thing is that it is all laid out for me and I know what I can and can't eat and the most important thing is that I have committed to do it. This is a little embarrassing, but I feel like I need to write it so that I'm responsible for the results and so that I can share it with everyone when I've finally reached my goal weight. Tonight, on my neighbor's scale, I was 142.4 lbs. And I'm hoping to loose another 10-15 lbs when I start trying to maintain and not lose anymore.

So...here I go.

I CAN'T STOP...

Ok, so I'm a little obsessed with scrapbook kits now! They are SO much fun! So I finished making my blog background today and here is the 2nd one that I made today! I think I am going to have to stop for a few days...:)

AHHHH...PICTURES...

Here are some pictures from April...mostly of Berkley, but we got in there once... :)

NEW BACKGROUND

Over the last year I have learned A LOT about blogging, photoshop, photobucket and other online things. And each time I learn something new, I'm engrossed in it until I have what I want i.e. my blog looking a certain way. A while back I read up on how to make my pictures bigger and getting my pictures bigger was a breeze...getting them to fit on my blog right, wasn't. So I learned about HTML, which isn't the most exciting, but I finally got it to work. Yesterday I decided to find out how to make my own background, since all the free templates don't fit my blog right since it is a lot wider. So I found this website/blog and this lady had a whole tutorial on it! I was thrilled! She had a kit, but I downloaded a different one and just followed her steps. I have learned so much in the last 20 hours, it's amazing! I made the header as an afterthought and it turned out the way I wanted, so that was pretty fun too. So if you want to make your own background and you have photoshop, here is a GREAT tutorial!

http://www.kevinandamanda.com/whatsnew/tutorials/how-to-make-a-scrapbook-blog-background.html

BYU...HERE WE COME...

Well, the Graduate school applications were sent in, and the acceptances came back and the winner is BYU Social Work!

Matt applied to 8 different graduate school programs and was accepted into 5 of them. We are SOOO proud of him and the hard work that he has put in to work and school. After a lot of pondering, weighing pros and cons, praying, fasting, thinking logically and a lot of worrying (mostly on my part), we decided that BYU would be the best school to attend. We are so excited about being back in the Provo area again where we have friends and family. We will be moving down to Spanish Fork the middle of August and Matt will start school August 30th. We will be there for at least 2 years, and are thrilled about this new and exciting time in our lives!

BAD + GOOD...ALL AT ONCE

February 23, 2010....The last day of my last blog entry. That is pretty bad, even for me. Most of you don't know, but I teach the 16-18 year old girls at church and this Sunday's lesson is....JOURNALS! Yup, something I'm not very good at doing. I was doing ok with the blog, which I consider somewhat as a journal, but I haven't been doing very well have I? In my lesson it doesn't say anything about online journal options, and I think when we are talking about underage girls, that's probably a good thing, but I did want to bring up the option of a personal blog as a journal. For them I would stress the importance of keeping it totally private from anyone, but I thought I would get input from all you online bloggers about your thoughts and ideas about blogging or journaling and how it has been a blessing in your life.

I'm definitely grateful...even though I haven't shown it in the last couple of months...for blogs and how not only we can reconnect with people but how we can use it to look back on our day, week, or month and remember things in greater detail than we would normally if we hadn't written our thoughts and feelings down. I don't like making commitments that I don't think I will keep, but I need to make a commitment to myself to be better at writing in my journal and on my blog.