Yes, I'm still alive...

I'm going to go ahead and say that this week has been one of the longest in my life. A good week... but a LLLLLOOOOONNNNNGGGGG week. I'm sorry to my friends who I have neglected this week, but ask my husband, I barely had time to take a breath. I missed you though!

School days, school days... I never knew the end of that song but I always sing "Old and rotten rule days...." I don't think that's how it goes, but at this point it sort of fits my mood. I don't mean to complain, but I believe this semester is going to be somewhat of an "opportunity" for me, if you know what I mean. For instance, my first class I went to on Monday was Rhetoric. Yes, the study of symbolic expression and how people communicate. Lovely. Our professor announced a reading schedule that would take more time than I had even if his class was the only I was enrolled for. He handed out the syllabus and told us that the 1st chapter should already have been read before the first class. I looked down at the endless reading schedule and saw an assignment for Monday. Labor Day. Excuse me, sir, do you have a life? Me neither....

That's how the day started. This whole week has been school school school. Class, work, study. No working out. No taking pictures. No posting on blogs. No fun. NO TIME!!!!! SOOOOOOO.... it's Friday (Praise praise praise praise GOD) and I finally got my favorite toy out to play. Since I have no child, I took pictures of my mom's puppy. Not a great model because she doesn't listen or sit still, but I didn't care. Just to be doing something fun was SUCH a treat! So tonight, my husband is asleep and I stayed up to play with Photoshop. Tonight, I have a collection of photos from several different days, but I wanted to share them with you all.

Last week we were in charge of house sitting for the Hammonds. Of course it was more of a treat for us than anything! Jet skis, view of the lake, time of relaxation.... love it.

Here is some jet ski action.

Couple of shots that I thought were pretty from their deck (AKA resort).

No post processing on the sunset. Still beautiful!




One day I got the pleasure of taking pictures of Jennifer's little boy, Sam. He's such a cute little guy!








This one has Big Boy in it! Eric and I call him HUGE boy... he has to weight like 200 lbs now! Look how big his head is compared to Sam?




And here's Darlin. Maybe 3 lbs now. Not as big as Big Boy.






And finally, here are a couple of my niece and nephew (remember the very first day I had my camera?). Not very sharp pictures but I miss them so much and wanted to post a couple of them. Love you and miss you tons, Austin and Kenzie!

Rockin'

Jason and Crystal Barbaree's daughter, Makaul, has been taking electric guitar lessons from Eric for the past several weeks. She has learned a whole lot and has improved tremendously! She plays Mary had a Little Lamb "rock style" and everything. So cute. Anyway, Crystal asked me to take a couple pictures of them while she was learning, so I did. It was cute to see how well Eric was working with her and how intently she listens to what he says. Here are a couple pics.




So... I've got big news. *Okay, saying I've got big news reminds me of something else I've been needing to say. WE ARE NOT PREGNANT. WE ARE NOT PLANNING ON GETTING PREGNANT FOR SEVERAL YEARS. All of the sudden, I've had about 10 people ask me if I'm pregnant. Either I'm getting fat or someone is spreading rumors!! I think I'm starting to get a complex. Yeah, so seriously.... yesterday I was doing a bible study at Starbucks with a couple of youth and this woman from church walked up and said "Hey Ashley! Are you pregnant?" WHAT? I couldn't help but wonder if I was letting my stomach relax a little too much. Haha. Anyway, several people have been asking... please pass on the truth as I know it.... I'm not pregnant. Yes, we have been married for a WHOLE year now... but that doesn't mean it's baby time. Thank you.*

Back to the big news. Okay, so a friend of mine from high school has a sister who is a photographer. She does a lot of weddings and she's really good. Anyway, she saw some recent pictures I took that I posted on facebook and commented how I was really catching on fast. Then she asked me if I would be interested in being a second shooter for a wedding in September. Would I be interested? HECK YEAH! So, here I go... jumping in... I know nothing about shooting weddings.... heck, I don't know much about photography in general. I'm so excited though. She said she would let me tag along at a bridal shoot or engagment session and show me how to use an external flash (prayers for me will be accepted) and let me practice with her lenses since we both use Canon. This is going to be super fun and a HUGE challenge for me. I'll keep you updated, but if you want to check out her website it is audraeburtonphotography.com.

Good stuff. Anyway, school starts in 6 days. Only 2 semesters left! HOORRAAAYYY!! I'm taking 18 hours and I know it will be tough semester but I can see the finish line. Praise God. Hope everyone is having a wonderful week.

New Land

Yesterday, our church had a members gathering party to celebrate the purchase of new land that our building will be built on soon. It was lots of fun getting to talk to people in our church family. I can just feel the excitement everyone is sharing, knowing that one day we will have a building, which will be a tool in helping people come to Christ. And perhaps in about 10 years, when Eric and I have our first kid (hint hint to everyone who keeps asking), he or she will come to know Christ there. Anyway, Jeremy (the pastor) sent us all out to walk the land and pray over it. I multi-tasked.... prayed and took pictures at the same time. Nice, right? Anyway, I want to share a couple pictures. They are nothing great, but the memory is so significant I thought I would post them. Enjoy.

Modeling Portfolio

Tonight I went to see the movie Mama Mia with one of my good friends, Jessica. We couldn't quite convince our husbands that the movie was going to be wonderful, but we did convince them to go eat pizza with us beforehand. After we had dinner, I asked Jessica if she needed to add some shots to her "modeling portfolio." Although she's not a professional model, she's beautiful and she makes a WONDERFUL model for me to practice on!! Bless her heart, she walked around with me all over the square letting me boss her around and stick a camera all up in her face and stuff. We spent the perfect amount of time shooting, then headed to our movie. Tonight was tons of fun. Here are some pictures to share.

Too much coffee = Lots of laughing

Tonight we had youth for church and Justin (Youth Worship Leader) asked me to take some pictures of the worship service. While I had a good time, I found it pretty difficult to get good angles. Also, since I have a prime lens, there was no zooming.... so everything was pretty far away. It's tough for me to get sharp pictures of faces from several feet away but oh well, I enjoyed it. Here are a few from youth.




After youth, several of the "adults" went to Starbucks for coffee. It seems to be our time to chill out on Wednesday nights after hanging out with the crazy youth. I mean, we are pretty crazy ourselves, but tonight I don't think the Jr. High could talk about anything on topic. Daniel and I pretty much asked and answered all the questions ourselves. They talk about things such as giving a wedding ceremony to two rocks, pointing not being nice, giving burgers to homeless men, and why Noah wasn't senile when he built the ark (since he was over 500 years old). SIGH. Oh Jr. High. All you can do is laugh and keep trying. Right? Anyway, so the people who made the drinks at Starbucks tonight must have put something VERY strong in them. We all had our giggle boxes turned on (Daniel is prob. laughing right now) and had MANY good belly laughs. It was so much fun and really good to have such great friends. Here are some photos from SB.

Daniel, did you drink ALL of those? :)

This one is cute. I wish Jessica's hand was down, but their cute smiles make up for it!

I think this one is fun.

Shantay and Justin getting their laugh on.

I just love Chico. If you poke him, he laughs even harder!!!! HAHA!

That's all for now. Look at me blogging 2 times in 3 days.

All of my favorites

Yes, all of my favorites have been combined into one weekend. Music, family, and photography. I've been dying to post some pictures of everything we have been up to, but everytime I try, my heavy eyelids get the best of me. We've just been so busy lately, and therefore, I have been too tired to do much of anything productive. We have had a blast though. Let me explain.

First of all, our band got the privilege of recording a live CD in a studio this past Saturday. We earned 3 days of recording for playing at a youth camp, so we used the first of the three to do a live recording session with people from our church taking part. It was amazing. Our band spent Thursday and Friday nights cramped into a little bedroom, practicing into the wee hours. I took a few pics so you could see the fun.

Here's the host. He let us make a bunch of racket in his home... I bet the neighbors LOVED it. :)

A picture of my mic. Boy do I love singing.

Chico's drums. I kinda like the black and white. Do you?

My husband rockin' out. Very nice.

Second day of practice.... Claybourne brought our band shirts that Paul made. WOOHOO!

We played a few songs, then decided it was snack time. OF COURSE IT IS!

So the next day was recording day! I woke up excited... but before I could go record, I had to go sell some stuff in a garage sale. 6 am was WAY to early to get up! You'd better believe I took my camera to keep me company.

Starting at 10:30 am, we started setting up for a 7:00 pm show. Lots of things take place before you can record and sound decent.... so that means lots of time for me to shoot some pictures!

Here is a picture of set up. Very exciting, I know. I had to document everything!

So, notice how far we have gotten into the day. I mean, it's at least 11 am by now. Then, I look down and notice this..... yeah, one thing is not like the other.

Two different flip flops! Who does that? Duh, ME!

Here we are enjoying our million dollar pizzas for lunch. Seriously expensive. Yikes. It was totally worth it though. I would eat pizza morning noon and night if I could. ha!



This is right before "Showtime." We really had a blast and an incredible time of worship.

For the show, Eric's mom and her husband drove down (1.5 hrs) just to be a part of the recording and to spend some time with us. They ended up staying with my parents (our apartment is pretty tiny) and on Sunday after church we made burgers on the grill and had a swim party. But don't be misled, it was no "leisurely Sunday afternoon swim." OH NO... it was a full out competitive game of water volleyball. A water splashing, trash talking, ball slammin' game of volleyball. It was the "old" against the "young," 4 against 2. The games were tied 1 to 1 and we had to have a championship tie breaker. Who won? Well who do you think? I'm a state champion. :) hahaha

This is a cute picture of my mother/father-in-law.

He's so good at this. YUM!


Here is my mom's puppy, Darlin'. She was scared of only the scariest diet coke can in the entire world. Who could blame her?


Nothing better than full tummies, a game of volleyball, and a little politics talk, right? Um..... yeah..... No comment on the last part. ;)

So thanks everyone for making it such a wonderful weekend. It really was memorable for me.

On a side note, I would also like to add that I read something life changing tonight. It's funny how things just kind of hit you when you are least expecting it. I'm doing a bible study with a couple of youth from church, and we are doing a study on the book A Call To Die by David Nasser. We met for the first time tonight, so I read the introduction and prologue this afternoon beforehand. David made such a profound statement in his book that my little brain had a hard time wrapping my thoughts around it. He said, "It is much easier to be a nice Christian than a radical one." Wow. How long have I lived with the idea that I need to be like Jesus, the sweet, kind, tender loving Man? Since I was 13. I just realized that while Jesus was sweet and kind, he was also radical. He changed the world. He was not ALWAYS nice for the sake of being nice. He was loud. He was blunt. He made people mad. He made people think. He told it like it was. He did not always have the "nice Christian answer." He spoke Truth and thought more about glorifying God than making sure everyone liked him. I mean, I always knew this about Jesus, but I didn't think that I had to follow that aspect of Jesus' character all the time. I like being nice. I like for people to like me. And that's okay. I just don't need to make that my primary concern because I will always be let down. I want to be radical. I want to think more about glorifying God than myself. Everyone doesn't have to like me. Everyone doesn't like me. It's okay. It IS ok... Thank you God for showing me something new and refreshing today. I pray that it will change my outlook on life while I'm on this earth. I pray that we will be radical Christians.

Love you guys. Thanks for stopping by.

Anniversary Number 1

We had a great first year anniversary (It was yesterday, for those of you who didn't realize the year has already flown by). Actually, we kind of made it into an anniversary weekend. Two reasons we did this.

1. It's our first anniversary and we wanted to make it special
2. Stonewater had the staff retreat on the actual day, so we improvised

Earlier this year we tried to plan a trip to celebrate, but lack of funds and other events conflicted. I was sort of bummed that we weren't going to be celebrating our day in a special way, but I happened to forget that my husband is awesome. :) He totally rocked all week long. On Friday, he surprised me with a gift. It was Adobe Photoshop Elements, since knows that I've been getting into photography and loving it and every photographer knows you need post processing capabilities. So... WOO HOO!!! I am so excited.

On Saturday, Eric woke me up with a Starbucks Caremel Macchiato (my fav), ground Starbucks coffee for me to make this week, and a new mug that I REALLY wanted last time we went there. He's so sweet for tuning in. Needless to say, I was surprised and a very happy girl. So we had band practice that morning until 1 pm, and I came home afterwards to took a nap. Eric said he had other errands to run. Once again he woke me up with a surprise. Guess what? New bedroom furniture. With the help of Marcus and Daniel, he snuck it into our living room. Okay, so if anyone has seen our apartment, you know that most of our furniture has been given to us (new or hand me down). Which means, most of it does not match.... ESPECIALLY in our bedroom. We had a garage sale chest of drawers (bottom drawer broke), donated dresser and mirror (scratched and old), and a wobbly little bitty accent table that barely held up a lamp and alarm clock, and that's all. So, my husband found a new modern, black Dresser, Chest of Drawers, and Nightstand and the Woods Outlet here in town. It looks fantastic! I love our bedroom now. Everything matches and it looks so cute.

On Saturday night Eric wanted to take me to Ft. Worth to eat. We went to none other than Texas De Brazil. If you haven't been there, you need to go in a very bad way. It was so so good. We both had to roll out of there. Ugh.... miserable, but so worth it. Afterwards my husband, oh so graciously, let me take pictures of him around Sundance Square. He's such a trooper. I always feel bad, because even though I need practice, I make him stand places and stick a camera in his face. Then he'll ask if I got any "good ones" and I have to reply honestly. "No... but I'm learning!" haha... Poor thing. It's fun though. Oh, I so love it.

So Sunday was church like normal. It seems like the two services are growing and we will DEFINITELY need that early service again come fall. And I want to add that it really seems like the church is catching on to the whole "worship" thing. The last few Sundays have been amazing. I can actually hear people singing. I even took my ear monitor out for the last song because it sounded so beautiful. It has been so amazing seeing the church grow as a family and as Christians together. Everyone is really catching on to what worship is all about. God is so good.

Yesterday was our real anniversary and we spent the evening at the staff retreat. It ended up being a really enjoyable evening for celebrating. Eric welcomed me to the door with a beautiful boquet of flowers. Everyone even sang us "Happy Anniversary" to the birthday song. It was awesome. *I want to give a special thanks to Misti for going to so much trouble for us. She made THREE cakes and TWO Homemade ice creams (one of them we will be enjoying this afternoon). The White's have been so awesome to us since the day I met them and always go out of their way for us. Thank you guys for everything.* I spent a little time taking pictures at the party, and with some guidance from Misti, learned some new things and had a good time. So, our anniversary weekend was great and I'm so thankful to have such a wonderful husband and great friends.

Today I've experimented with post processing and wanted to share some pictures from our weekend. Here's to one wonderful year with my husband, and hopefully MILLIONS more! :)

Here is the new furniture. It's called Black Cherry and it really looks black in person, but the flash made it look brown.

Here is Eric and I at Sundance Square after we ate.

And here is the reason for our miserable-ness.... is that a word? YUM!





Here is a shot of Eric that I like. Cutie.

Here are the beatiful flowers that Eric greeted me with at the door at the Staff Party.

Here are some of the shots I got at the staff party. This was is of Sarah and Jenna playing.




Daniel was the kid-entertainer for the night. Oh, and I see some BO-BO! :)

This is Eric winning.... maybe. haha

This is Misty Carters baby making the CUTEST expression ever.

This is little Sarah Sprayberry. Apparently she makes adorable faces like this all the time. :)




I can't get enough of her little hair. It's so soft and I just want to play with it!

That's it for now. I'm still working on all my picture taking and editing, but I'm having a blast! Thanks for looking!