Most embarrassing moment...

The other night at our girls meeting we had an ice breaker where everyone had to answer different fun random questions:) When we were coming up with the questions days before, I'm the one that came up with "What is the most embarrassing moment the first comes to mind" well of course I got bitten with that when I picked it out of the basket that night at the group! lol!! Yikes!...I'm not going to post it on here because it's just WAAAAAAAAY to embarrassing to post it anywhere public;) But the other night we had another one that happened that pretty much came in close second! haha!!
We went out to eat with our friends, Josh and Faith, for Faith's belated birthday dinner! :) We got her a Lucky Jeans gift card....so she went to open the present(the card, along with a bracelet, and a catalog in a bag) well she finds the bracelet and catalog...pulls all the tissue paper out and is like "Thanks! I love the bag!" lol! Well apparently the gift card was no where in site! VERY embarrassing! HAHA! Finally we decided to look in the car, maybe it had fallen out, and FINALLY after scouring the car twice they found it!! haha!

SOOOO...what is your most embarrassing moment??? Post it here..if you dare!!! lol! :)

Just so fulfilled:)

My life at the present seems so full and fulfilled it's amazing!! I guess just really doing all the things that I love and being surrounded by the people I love is the cause of it! :) I have done alot of shoots in the past couple weeks and not as much time behind the computer(Thank God!). But the newest love of my life is officially... teaching! haha! I never thought I would say that! My friends, Rebecca, Sam, and I started a girls group for our church! The first meeting was last night and it went so well! God really blessed the whole thing and I'm excited what he does through it! And yet again I had to give the talk:) This time it was, "Why in the world are you a Christian??" haha! I'm working on a blog post about it too(for the blog slacked Dear Natalie blog) but it came during that whole time that I was questioning "Why" in this**post** so it was interesting!! We're going to be doing these most likely every other week or so which should be so much fun and a great way for the girls to connect!!
I love you all and am really excited for what the future holds!!

Dana & Thomas

I just shot an awesome engagement session on Saturday afternoon!
Dana and Thomas were so incredibly easy to shoot that I shot the most I ever have: a whopping 850 pics! Yikes! haha!
We did it down at North Avenue Beach which is one of my favorite places to shoot, it's just so gorgeous!
We just had so much fun and they said that they should just start doing this full time modeling and I completely agree! :) I can't wait for their beautiful wedding this September in Chicago! CLICK HERE for the slideshow!!

Home, very sweet home!

Wow!! It is so amazing to be back home! I got back safely last night.
Almost everyone came to pick me up from the airport and they've all grown like crazy weeds! My 12 year old brother is now a whole inch and a half taller than me! hehe!
Last night was great, right when I got home I had to babysit the kids so we just had a party night, danced, watched a movie, and got ice cream:) I didn't realized how much I missed everyone!
I thought I was going to have slight culture shock when I came back because that is what happened last time. But it didn't really happen, although I was going crazy about being able to brush my teeth with water from the sink and flush toilet paper!! Because you can't do either one there and I totally take it for granted! LOL!

I'm so revved up to get moving on everything that I need to get done it's awesome!!
Have a great night!!
PS..This afternoon I did an engagement shoot which I'll post about hopefully tomorrow!
PSS..that picture is us at the airport, plus our friend Matt:)

Bittersweet...

Well, I completely lost track of time down here! Today is my last day and I'm leaving super early tomorrow morning. It's been so amazing here! I really can't wait to come back. I think next time I want to come for about a month and do other work besides photography!
Today I have two more shoots, a senior and a family shoot! Then tonight we are going to have a traditional Dominican meal(which is AMAZING BTW)
Even though I absolutely LOVE it down here I can't wait to get back home too! I miss my family and friends so much! During the day down here I've been by myself most of the time and while that's good and I've gotten alot done I really like being around ALOT of people all the time it actually keeps me recharged! haha!
I'm sorry I haven't posted any photoshoot pics yet..I have to get permission from the parents to post them. So once I get that I'll be sure to put up a slideshow!
I love you all!!
PS...I'm trying to avoid my bedroom right now..because I just saw the HUGEST spider almost the size of my hand I tried to kill it but it was SO fast and now it's somewhere in my room but I'm not sure where... AHHH!! LOL

So busy chillin...

This trip has been so awesome in that I feel like I've done absolutely nothing the whole time and have been completely refreshed yet we've gotten SOOO much work done too! Everyday it basically just consists of reading, looking out over the mountains, shooting, and looking at pics! It's wonderful! This morning I didn't have any plans and everyone was gone so I just sat out on the porch, read, and had my devotional time! All of a sudden it just started pouring rain! It's so spectacular though because I can still just sit out here and not get rained on or anything but watch it come in over the valley in sheets!
Here is a little video of this crazy plant that my aunt showed me!! To bad I can't bring some back to the states! How cool would it be to grow this! haha!
**CLICK HERE** for the video:) For some reason it wasn't letting me embed it here..
This afternoon we are going to try to get in about 7 more photoshoots! We did all 10 guys shoots last week, yearbook pics, and a family shoot. So 8 more shoots to do!! Yeah! :)

The Beach!!

Well, I guess I was right! There was no internet out at the beach! Which made the time so much better! :) My grandma, aunt, two cousins and I arrived Friday morning and stayed till this afternoon and did...absolutely nothing! It was so refreshing! We had a place looking out over the ocean and the warm breeze would just blow in! I definitely felt like I was more on a honeymoon than just a normal vacation that's how unreal it was! haha! I got up before sunrise to watch the sun come up over the ocean! It was so breathtaking!!

It was hilarious because I was talking to my cousin about how refreshing it all was and we were both saying that when someone would ask us what were thinking about we realized that we don't think we were really thinking about anything! LOL! I planned on getting some reading done but I didn't even do that! It was great! We just sat by the pool, on the roof, ran by the ocean, and just sat talking for hours and hours! Of course with 5 girls that's pretty much all we did, TALK - everything from saving the world to planning our weddings to be in the DR! :) Absolutely beautiful time!

Right when we got back this afternoon I had to head over to teach a the school youth group! My aunt asked last year if I was interested in teaching it and I was so they found a time for me to do it this year! I taught on vision and having purpose to about 30 students and it went sooo well! God helped me so much because I used to be so nervous doing any kind of public speaking but this time I wasn't nervous AT ALL!! It was a blast I definitely want to do it more often!

Silver lining

Wow! What an awesome couple days!
We have so far done 7 senior shoots and almost all the school yearbook pics! All this work and I guess I just need a vacation...haha!! Well actually we are going to the beach tomorrow for 3 days which should be incredible and I heard we are going to do...NOTHING!! Which is so perfect! I'm going to try to work on this tan on the little melanin that I have!! HAHA!

The shoots today went so great! We tried out a bunch of new places but at the end always finish with this place! It turns out to be every ones favorite place to shoot and they all want "the jumping shot" since they saw them from last year:) So here is a new version of it! "Disclaimer - No one was hurt or injured in the making of this picture" THANKFULLY! lol!!
I'm not sure if I'll have internet at the beach but I kind of hope I don't! Love you all!

In heaven!

I'm sitting in my most favorite place in the whole world, my aunt's porch that looks out over the valley! It's kind of like watching a fire you can just sit out here for hours and just look out at the mountains! It's beyond incredible! I think someday I'm going to get a place down here cause I love it so much:)

Last night was so trippy, I laid down to go to sleep and all of a sudden I saw flashes of light. Kinda freaked out and thinking I was going crazy, I finally realized after a little bit that it was about 5 or 6 fireflies flying around my room! Made for a great light show!! haha!

This week is going to be so great, we have about 16 senior shoots lined up, 2 family shoots, and yearbook pics for the whole school! I love it though cause really to me shooting isn't "work" it's my hobby that I turned into my job! And what better place to do it than down in the Caribbean!! :) I'll post some pics soon!

FINALLY!!!

Whew! I made it to the Dominican!
Only after the craziest couple days ever! My goal was to get EVERYTHING caught up before I left so it took alot of work but I did it! Coming off of yesterday, which included going downtown Chicago twice to get my passport and doing my taxes, it's amazing to be down here! Even though this is a "business" trip with a ton of shooting lined up it will still be so refreshing!
Funny though, coming off those crazy days I finally get down here thinking that I remembered everything, get into customs and you have to buy a tourist card to leave the airport...the only problem, I hardly ever carry cash...AND they don't accept a credit card! I had NO clue how I was going to get out of the airport until I finally spotted my aunt through a window and tried to motion to her that I had no money and couldn't get out! So the guards let her in so she could give them the cash!! haha! This should be a fun ride!! :)

Finally shooting!

Yeah!! We're finally getting back into the shooting season! :)
I did a head shot/senior shoot for my friend Cassi the other day and we seriously had so much fun! When you're in Chicago you have NO clue what the weather will be like the next day, so this shoot had to be rescheduled from the week before because of rain but on this day instead of rain it was 30 degrees! Yikes! Cassi is so great though and pulled off the shoot so well acting like it was 80 degrees! :) Here is the slideshow **click here**

Beautiful!

Today was so great! Normally we get together with a bunch of family but alot of people are out of town now so we didn't quite know what we were going to do to celebrate until yesterday afternoon when we found out that there were other families from our church with the same predicament! So what do you do?? Have a party! haha! We had about 6 families over for Easter dinner of chili and hamburgers! Why do it any other way? Although, I do have to say that I slept during alot of the party on the couch! lol! Everyone kept asking how in the world I could fall asleep with 40 people all around talking. Well, it's a Barlow thing! My grandpa would do the same thing because he never wanted to miss anything so I guess that got passed down!

I hope you all had an amazing day! I have really been studying lately why Jesus came to die and it has truly opened my eyes to how much he really loves us! He really didn't have to but did anyways which is the biggest sacrifice anyone could give just so that I could have a relationship with Him!! Amazing! It blows my mind!
The collage above is of my sister Olivia getting ready for church! So cute!

Looking beyond the boundaries!

My dad and I just watched a movie this afternoon called The Four Minute Mile. The movie was about Roger Bannister the first person to ever break the "barrier" of the 4 minute mile! The funny part was that he and several other guys had been training for years and years to break 4 minutes and nobody was able to so it became almost ingrained in them mentally that it couldn't be broken, that it was humanly impossible to go faster! Then one afternoon everything changed when Roger ran the mile in 3.59 minutes against a bunch of odds too! He had an amazing coach who taught him to ignore what others say about impossibilities and just press through. He gave the example that while he was in the war they were trapped in a body of water that was so cold and you really weren't "supposed" to last beyond 2 hours but he made it to 6!! He went on to tell Roger that it is only pain that you have to endure and when you can you can break those barriers!

This movie just really made me start to think of the barriers that I've set up in my life that I don't think I can pass, just because it's been mentally ingrained in me to think it's impossible!! The best part of the story is that once he ran the mile in 3.59 minutes another guy who had also been training to break it for years ran it in 3.57 a couple weeks later!!! So it was all mental!! What barriers do we need to break for others so that they can win too?? :) I love you all!! I guess I've been pretty deep lately, but it's fun!! lol! Have an amazing Easter and remember the REAL reason why we celebrate it:)

Always plan..

Oh my gosh! I spent the whole morning in pure torture! On the phone! lol!
When I was younger I used to be very organized and a really good planner but since starting my own business sometimes not everything gets attention right away! I was out driving around yesterday when it hit me MY PASSPORT IS EXPIRED!! AND I'm leaving for the Dominican Republic in 5 days! The way that I figured out it was expired was I went through security at the airport a couple days ago and the lady saw it was expired so I had to go through the "terrorist check" LOL! Then I go to find out that not only is it expired BUT since I got it before I turned 16 I have to get a complete new one too! So after calling the Passport agency from 7:30-11am this morning I finally got to speak to someone and they pretty much explained everything I have to do to get it but thankfully I'll STILL be able to make it to the DR! Whew! Moral of the story: Go and check NOW when your passport expires!! And always plan ahead! haha!! Ok, now I have to get out of my pajamas!! Have an amazing day!!

Nothing but sky.

I love taking retreats!! It is one of the best things ever! I get a chance to just get quiet and regroup and think of all the things I need to do, want to do, pray, and read. It's so refreshing and every time I get back I'm ready to get moving on exactly what I'm supposed to do! It's so great cause once you have a vision and know where you are going you need to stay on course to get there! Every so often though things come up and you get busy and it will get you just slightly off where you are supposed to be focused. That is why this is so important because I can completely view my life and stand back and see what I need to correct or add. Yesterday I got back from a short little retreat that I took out at my cousins house while they are on the road. It was amazing just laying out in the grass by the water and just dreaming looking out at the sky and thinking that the possibilities of what I can accomplish are endless and I can literally be and do anything that I want right now. What an amazing feeling! I think I'm going to go back out at the end of the week for a little more R&R but this time was so awesome and God showed me so many amazing things! I'm so excited!
Ps. Here is a picture of my sister a couple days ago out at my cousins...it was so adorable, it started to rain and she didn't have a coat with her so she had to wear my aunts coat. So that's her and my cousin Nathan out shooting with the guys:)
Pss. lol! That picture at the top is from my last trip to Florida...definitely not from around here!! haha!