having spent the evening photographing semi-naked pregnant women (well, there was some total nudity as well), i am finally resting at the end of the day and understanding that what i know about photography is just the tip of the proverbial iceburg. pregnancy is the most beautiful state of womanhood, in my humble opinion, and in my short career as a photographer it has become my favorite thing to shoot. it’s such a challenge- trying to capture the interaction between a couple, to light in such a way as to illuminate the curves of a pregnant woman so that she feels flattered instead of just fat, and to make that belly the focus to which we are drawn. i’m thankful for the friends who let me “in” to such an intimate part of their lives. how beautiful…
so that’s the end of my weekend. halloween was ALL THAT, i have to say. there was trick-or-treating, (and no, we didn’t have to pass candy door-to-door, although our neighbor miss leola did chase down a few kids for us), homemade hot chocolate, and marshmallow roasting around the firepit. (remember when it was a campfire?) that was the only the beginning, however.
saturday morning i’m standing naked in the bathroom, drying my lovely locks of hair, when in BURSTS my youngest daughter shouting, “mommy, MOMMY, baba and pawpaw are on the TWINSPAN!!!” excuse me, what??? WHAT did you say???!! on go the clothes and i call them to find out that yes, indeed, they are coming to visit and didn’t they tell me they were coming?? lol… i LOVE my in-laws. it’s a good thing. we did have a very nice time and i’m VERY glad they came. lucky them, they even got to see hsm3 with us!!!
this morning was homecoming sunday for our church. for those of you not familiar with the ritual, let me tell you about it. every year, on some special date, there is a special reunion sunday for all of those people who have left the church, either because they have moved away, stopped attending church, or became malcontents who decide to bless some other lucky church with their presence. it’s the sunday when everybody COMES HOME. kindof like salmon swimming upstream to their spawning grounds, i guess? anyhoo… we do a lot of things that TOTALLY are different from what our church does on a regular basis and it doesn’t represent who we are today… which is a shame because i’m really proud of who our church is NOW. and it’s not just my church that participates in this kind of ritual. lots of them do it. i think we should definitely rethink the whole thing. imho…
there is my weekend in retrospect… naked pregnant women, jack-o-lanterns, candy, kids, hsm ad nauseum, surprise family visit, and HOMECOMING. what did YOU do?
today i have felt kind of restless. i don’t really know why…well, maybe i just feel like there are a lot of loose threads in my life at the moment. i think it’s good to feel that way every now and then, as it reminds me to stop and look upward for direction. which is what i should be doing all the time anyway, but i seem to forget that. as i drove through the bywater to pick up the girls from school, i was thinking about God (yep- i’m just full of deep thoughts), and i just began talking to him. actually, it was more of a ramble than anything else. before i knew it, i was following a common courtesy line of thought and i asked, “hi God, how are you??” i chuckled to myself and thought how silly of me, and then it HIT me like a ton of bricks. really God, how are you? as polite and interested as i often am in the wellbeing of those around me, it took me 34 years to ask my maker how he’s doing. what kind of relationship IS this, anyway? 
