Please forgive the look of my blog but I got hacked.

Sad face emoji.

The good thing is, they only wrecked my theme/look/formatting and not my content so while I wait for help with the new logo and look…

please forgive the mess.

Oh and here is a photo of the Oregon Coast.

Ecola Park, Cannon Beach, OR

When I used to daydream about all the beautiful places to travel and amazing places to see, my mind had not yet experienced an Asian culture.  It was like a color I had never seen and couldn’t even imagine.  In some ways, I feel like I finally have eyes to see.

I have only been here a handful of weeks with even fewer experiences in the heart of the communities surrounding me.  But all of a sudden, there are new colors, new smells, super gross things and utterly amazing things.  But it is all disguised as run down, dilapitated city streets that hardly seem worth venturing down.  If someone held up a photo of this city next to a photo of nearly anywhere else in the world…I would probably not choose Seoul.

Until now.  My neck hurts from the whip lash.  I feel like a child in an amusement park…running from ride to game to sweet treat to my family to tell them all about it.  I am overwhelmed with the disguised beauty here.  The food, the people, the stores, the broken glass, the chipped paint…the stinky smells.  I am in love with Seoul.  It’s beauty is surprising and all consuming.  And I have a feeling that there will be a lot of “seen in Seoul” posts on this little blog.  I can’t imagine these photos even do it justice…you should probably just come over and wander the streets with me.

We could hear them shouting but it wasn’t angry.  We saw them gathered, intent on the center.  They were playing a game and didn’t care that we infiltrated the group or were snapping a few photos.  In fact, they were oblivious to us.  It felt like a secret whispered in the ear.  Like a treasure hidden in the wide open.  We watched them play for only a few minutes but I could have lingered for longer.  These people, so far from what I am used to but so close to who I want to learn.

Every single day is a new adventure my friends.  I really believe that no matter where you are, there is beauty in the people…in the places…in the treasure left lying about and the secrets tucked way back in.  Get out and explore, even areas that seem like they might not offer much.  It’s so beautiful out there!

I met Korean BBQ today.  I think we are in love.  Unfortunately, I think I met the best Korean BBQ place in Itaewon (or so most review sites say) so it’s either all down hill from here or I need to be gracious to all others?  Maple Leaf in Itaewon drew me in on the exterior and design of the restaurant alone.  The outside is covered in green glass bottles with large windows that open up to reveal birch trees, copper smoke stacks and concrete tables.

When you sit down to eat, you choose the cut of meat you want, the amount of rice you can handle and then you wait.  First they bring a small open pit with hot charcoals and set it in front of you.  Then they bring kimchi, poppy seed salad, garlic, bean paste, mushroom slices, and tofu in tiny dishes to share and or grill.  The meat is set atop the grill and a copper smoke stack lowered to hover above and keep the room smoke free.  You can choose to take the meat off when it is cooked to your desired preference but you can also throw things on if you want!  We added garlic, mushrooms and pineapple!

Since this is a new culture for us to experience…not all of us are amazing with chopsticks yet. But I love his resourcefulness!  😉

In case you are unfamiliar with Korean BBQ, after the meat is cooked, most people [read:the only people I have ever seen eat it.  so basically my american friends who also might not know what they are doing]  wrap it up in a lettuce leaf, add the bean paste or kimchi or mushroom or tofu or garlic or any combo of the few and then eat it like a taco.  it was DELICIOUS.

All in all, the food was amazing (we learned we needed to order twice what we thought we would want) and cooking it ourselves (verses letting the staff cook it for you) was our favorite! I have a “tender palette” so I also learned that “red stuff” means spicy and tofu is confusing.  I thought you only eat tofu if you are a vegetarian/vegan/hippie as an alternative to meat but I really broke the rules and liked putting it on TOP of my meat. Confusing right? Did you just shiver in your Birkenstocks, people who choose tofu instead of meat?

Side note, I added chopsticks to my shopping list.

And of course, a couple shots of the sights in Itaewon!  I love this new place we call home!

Our new home city.  Seoul, South Korea.  After being here for two weeks and ONLY focusing on setting up house, we celebrated the completion by exploring one of the nearby neighborhoods.  I might have squealed with joy as we walked through the gate on post and entered ACTUAL Seoul (base feels like America to me) and I definitely cried in my gelato.  Good tears…tears of joy.  Tears that scream I AM SO THANKFUL TO BE HERE tears.

This is just the first of many adventures on this side of the earth for us.  I just know it.  But today, we explore close to home, through main streets and back alleys, through tiny shops and past known entities like Dominos.  I had no idea what to expect and I loved EVERY second of it.  What a gorgeous, lively, colorful city.  Please, come take a walk with me through Itaewon.

Sensory overload as you walk through the streets.  Colors, shopping, food, music, and cheerful chatter.

You want something handmade?  You want a new suit or a sequined gown?  There are MILLIONS of options to choose from.

Houses and stores and restaurants are just stacked and shoved everywhere.  Tiny junky little doorways on bottom with opulent roof top dining up above.  Just so much going on!

Car port AND a store in one?  Just so different than what I have ever seen before!

Restaurants leaving food out in the open air to cook yet everyone swears that everything is totally safe to eat!

I am really going to enjoy all the English translation and signs here!  Snickering and giggling as I walk down the street might become the new norm.

We ended up in the antique district.  The prices were high but I assume it was because this area is very touristy.  But they had some AMAZING finds!  A turquoise rotary phone?  A yellow typewriter?  A Disney Pixare Incredibles lunch box?!  Hello?!  Ok…not that last one but the rest of it was pretty amazing and drool worthy!

Such organized construction!

I felt like we walked all around the area, got lost on purpose and still barely saw anything.  I can hardly wait for the many days of exploring we will have in this part of town and more!!  Thanks for walking with me!

When I met her for the first time, it was over pasta in a tiny German restaurant.  She sat at one end of the table and I at the other, separated by a handful of women and a tangle of conversations.  But in the midst of it all, she was smiling and sparkly and caught my eye.  We were introduced and she laughed at my jokes, so obviously I loved her.  I knew we had mutual friends, I knew she went to church with those I knew and I knew she homeschooled but beyond that, she was just a lovely, glittery-eyed friend of Rachel’s with an awesome sense of humor.

A few months later, our mutual friends started to ask for volunteers for the Relay for Life event coming up.  They said it was for a very specific person and that she really needed not only our prayers and support but our feet as well.  There again were those sparkly eyes but this time, I got to know her a bit better.  We walked a few laps together, she shared her story and I did my best to share the gifts God has given me with her by documenting the event.  I briefly met and chatted with her husband and kids and quietly shed tears as I watched her staying strong through the pain of it all.  At the end of the day, she hugged me long and hard, as if I was an old dear friend.  I was hooked on Aana.

Since then, she has changed my life.  I heard somewhere that people with cancer become the cool kids and suddenly everyone wants to be their friend.  If that is true…than of that I am guilty.  But there is something different about Aana.  There is something so lovely and endearing about her (that has NOTHING to do with cancer) and I see people just fall in love with her from very early on.  She blogs about her life in a very real way.  She shares the pain and the struggle yet always manages to give God the glory through it all.  No…she doesn’t sugar coat it or try to hide the hard stuff.  She is so honest and real, so strong and bold…she is just amazing in a thousand different ways.  And she has changed my life, even down to the most basic and daily tasks, that I can never begin to share with her how much she has blessed me.  Has she blessed you also?  I am so sure of it!

Her cancer is very aggressive.

I want to erase that last statement because it hurt me to re-read it.  But it’s true.  And while anyone who knows and loves her is praying for a miracle and trusting God’s will for her and her family’s life, there is still a certain fact to her disease.

As I read her blog posts and kept up with her updates, I felt like God was really putting it on my heart to just go and be with her and I couldn’t ignore it. She had mentioned a few wishes to have her family photos done, knowing that time could be short, and so…I told her she had no choice and I was going to be there.  Looking back, I question if that was rude or if I was unwanted and both may be rightfully true.  But I went anyway.

This is where it gets REALLY cool.  We are both from military families and have spent the better half of our lives moving all over the world. We have had to say good-bye to friends and loved ones more times than I prefer but always with the knowledge that we will run into each other again in the most random times and locations.  In steps a friend from high school.

There is this very dear woman living in Las Vegas (where Aana lives also) whom I have know since high school.  While we weren’t friends in school, we became quite smitten with each other in the last five years!  Her name is Courtney and she LIGHTS up the room when she walks in.  I contacted her the day I booked my ticket to let her know that I would be in her area next week but wouldn’t be able to see her this specific trip.  “Don’t be mad if you see I’m in Vegas and didn’t call you!”  But I also needed her help.  I wanted to be the least of a burden as possible on Aana and her family so my plan was to have a nice, yummy dinner delivered from a restaurant nearby.

Remember how I told you that Courtney is amazing?  Instead of giving me the info on nearby restaurants, she decided to feed us all herself.  Get this!  She picked me up from the airport AND had bags of food (separated by meal) ready for me to bless Aana’s family with.  She handmade Chicken Parmesan and garlic rosemary cauliflower for dinner but also provided homemade Banana bread for breakfast, sandwich wraps for lunch and homemade cookies for dessert.  She included EVERYTHING from grapes to fresh soft parmesan, after school snacks for the boys and cut up baguette for a dinner side!  I was in TEARS looking through it all!

And the coolest part?!  She unknowingly threw in Aana’s exact K Cup coffee (which Aana had on the list to get because they were out), she added Aana’s favorite girl scout cookies, a box of tea for Jack (he is a tea aficionado), and the boys favorite yogurt drinks…without even knowing they were favorites or in need!  And she made so much of everything (and it was all SO good) that Jack and Aana had left overs to enjoy!

I got in early in the morning and just in time to take Aana to her radiation appointment. After the treatment (and enjoying those delicious girl scout cookies) we spent the entire day talking. When she needed to rest, it was such a peaceful joy to just BE with her.  We talked about anything and everything and found such common ground on parts of life we didn’t know we shared.  Between bites of Courtney’s delicious blessings, we laughed at the good and cried over the hard.  We hugged, we prayed, I probably held her hand uncomfortably too long but it was just such a day I never wanted to end.

She allowed me to be a part of her life for that day.  To lead her to the big scary doctors office with the nice ladies that smile and speak sweetly to you, even though it feels really uncertain as to what is behind those doors and piles of paperwork. To sit in the back seat along side those three beautiful children of hers, recounting the school day events and discussing homework plans.  To cook in her kitchen and flip through her memory books, recounting stories and introducing me to the photo faces of her family…she let me in to her life in such a real and tangible way that it just solidified all I thought I knew to be true of Aana.  She is just as loving and giving and kind and brave and real as I felt had to be true.

Jack is an amazing pianist and would throughout the day, sit down and play some beautiful pieces for us to enjoy.  I would close my eyes and just cry at the sound of it.  Hymns, classics, some fast and some slow…he provided a living soundtrack to our time and I know it wasn’t just because I was there.  It made me tear up all over again to think of that amazing gift of comfort he daily offered up to Aana.  I can’t imagine, as a spouse, what it must feel like to not be able to remove the pain and discomfort from the one you love most but it seemed his music was the small but powerful gift he slid across the table towards Aana, hoping to take what ugliness she may feel and replace it with beauty.  I could be making all of this up but from the blanket of notes I felt being wrapped around my shoulders for just being there one day, I had a hard time not believing it to be true of every other day.

I went down there to take family photos for a person I loved dearly but didn’t really know all that well.  And I came back that next morning completely and deeply moved by the amazing Blalock family.  Thank you all for letting me in.  There aren’t enough words in the world, minutes in the day, or uncomfortably long hand holding sessions for me to tell you how much you mean to so many. While cancer doesn’t seem fair or make sense and my words may seem contrite, Aana…this life you have lived has blessed others.  Your husband, your children, your family, your friends, and even people you might not know but who know you…you have made all of our lives better.  Thank you for loving the Lord, for sharing His love with others and for being such a shining example of hope, gratitude and grace for us all!   I love you sweet friend.

They cryptically hinted at their pregnancy exactly one year ago while I was living way too far away.  I smacked my husband in the arm and told him I KNEW they were pregnant and then got really dramatic and complainey about how I didn’t get to be there for all the photo ops!  I even tried to see if there was a way that a quick weekend trip to Atlanta could somehow include a super fast jaunt up to Seattle to see and photograph beautifully pregnant Sara.  This is how much I love them!

Over four years ago, I met these two in a coffee shop to discuss their search for a wedding photographer.  In an instant, I was in love with this couple.  Sara is obviously beautiful but there is something so peaceful and loving about her that is just captivating.  Geoff is an amazing photographer who gets all my nerdy shop talk and loves his wife something fierce.  They are two of my favorite people in the whole wide world and I kinda get all Michael Scott around them.

Four years ago, it was an honor to photograph them as they exchanged commitments to one another.  And on this day, it was an honor to be introduced to the fruit of that blessed union.  Meet Elin.  Beautiful and happy and loved by all who meet her.

Thank you Geoff and Sara.  Your friendship means the world to me.  I will overstay my welcome a hundred times again just to sit at your feet and discuss life, parenting, books and travel with you.  You two amaze me in ways I will never be able to explain and I am so thankful to be able to photograph your growing family!  Thank you for trusting me with this time, for your long, don’t-let-go-yet hugs and for sharing sweet Elin with me!  May we always stalk each other to the fullest and find time to share whenever our longitude and latitude intersect!

Meet Ryan.  He plays tennis like a boss and rocks those piano keys in the band.  His sense of humor of is on point and he was SO easy to photograph!  My favorite part about our evening?  I barely had to help him prepare for a photo.  He was straight zoolander and just knew what to do before I even asked it!  And I think he thought I was funny…or maybe just a total dork.  Either way, I LOVED it when he busted out in a huge, genuine smile!

I went out on a limb and did our shoot in a Parks and Rec maintenance facility.  I love how all the garbage and junk worked out to make rad backdrops!

Thank you for letting ME be your photographer Ryan!  You were seriously awesome and slightly creepy at how well you read my mind!  Congrats on making it to your Senior year! Be awesome!!

PS.  The first time I took photos of his family (five years ago?) he asked to take a photo of him up in a tree.  Of COURSE we had to end our session that way!  Ryan, let us continue this tradition through your wedding and new baby photos (obvi way in the future…no pressure) mmmmkay?!

These two.  He wooed her by singing a Justin Bieber song in the most obvious manner.  She giggled in embarrassment but those lyrics (and his amazing voice obviously) won her over. Later, they shared the open mic at a coffee shop, serenading the guests (but really just each other) to She Is and Beautiful Disaster. He proposed to this woman of his dreams on a beautiful beach in California.  Her beautiful smile was only glossed over by a few tears before he swept off her feet for a victory hug!  These two are just adorable in every sense of adorableness!

It had been three years since I last photographed a wedding due to our military move overseas.  I was so very nervous!  Everyone kept telling me ” You’ll be fine! It’s like riding a bike!” but it isn’t.  Unless that bike is a vehicle that speeds you through the most important day of someone’s life and has interchangeable parts and surprise friends that fly in from out of town!  But God heard my prayers (my begging and pleading) and I nearly burst into tears a handful of times when there was NO reason I should have been witness to the amazing moments that unfolded before me…but by His grace…I was.  This beautiful couple was surrounded by their amazing family and friends!  Two power families merged into one and the love and acceptance was nearly overwhelming at times!  Overwhelming in the most incredible, please-don’t-stop way!

I have never blogged THIS many photos in one post before but guys?!  You need to see these people!  You need to see these amazing families coming together because two people fell in love.  You need to see the million reasons why people were dabbing their eyes and smiling from ear to ear.

This wedding wins for the most tears shed by a photographer.  These two families truly are amazing and to watch them give love so effortlessly, share emotions that ran so deeply and celebrate a new branch of the family tree so wonderfully…it was too much for my tear ducts to handle.  Thank you Williams and Mirk Families!  I feel so honored to be there, in all of those beautiful moments, as Jordan and Tara became man and wife.

Special thank you to my second shooter Amyee P for adding to this collection of amazing images!  And for getting me water when I demanded it.  And just being the best companion!!  You da best sistah and I coudn’t have done this without you!!

Make Up and Hair (Bride and Mom) – Breein North

Make Up for Bridesmaids – Shelby Stewart & Megan Sagdahl
Hair for Bridesmaids – Rachelle Morgan & Mary Nunez-Iese

Location – Red Barn Studios in Chehalis WA

Catering – Flying Tomato

Video – Andrew Lang

Officiant – David Day

DJ – Ty

Cake – Wendi Trummert

Dress – Maggie Sottero

Florist – Lena

Once upon a time, they asked me to be their photographer on the day of their wedding.  I fell in love with them and their ridiculously special ways and yesterday, they blew me away all over again.

Its been four years since that beautiful, blessed union took place.  This weekend, they opened their charming home up to me to meet their little baby girl and spend time photographing how life has changed in the most glorious of ways.  It was such a thrill to finally meet the littlest addition, but I can’t stop thinking about this as I go through their photos.  This beautiful piece of art hanging on their wall.

Custom created by the bride’s mother (who is insanely talented), she took the runner from the wedding day…

all dirty and stepped on, and turned it into the most amazing and thoughtful wedding gift I have ever seen.  Using the photo below, mother charcoal sketched the image on to the canvas.

All the people they love walked on this runner.  The slightly Seattle soaked ground stamped it’s ink on the soles of those in attendance.  Those people, who stood with them and promised to help them always uphold their commitment to one another, are with them always thanks to such a beautiful piece of art.

Are you as blown away by this as me?  Just so amazing…

Just when you think your heart is going to burst…

Congratulations Carroll Family.  It is truly an honor to call you friends and to be included in the most cherished moments of your lives.

Five years ago, they gifted me the privilege of photographing their intimate, beach-side wedding, surround by their favorite people.   This last week, sweet baby Isaac came into their world, and again, they let me in.  Joy of joys to stand close (all teary-eyed) watching their family grow.