Time for some refreshing!

Ohhh man! I'm now just finishing up my first day of a REAL vacation that I've had in a LONG time! On Saturday I finished up my entire Summer season and have several weeks off until the fall season sets in with TONS of traveling! Even though I'm excited about what's coming up....I seriously have to recoup from the past 3 months! They have been THE most crazy, exciting, and tiring months ever! With 9 weddings and 7 interns in 3 months it's been intense! I have made some of the most amazing friends and shot some of my favorite weddings ever! After soooo much output though there is always a season of taking a step back and just doing nothing and not feeling guilty for it either! :) I feel right now pretty much completely drained but I know after a week up here in Door County, Wisconsin I'll feel ready to conquer the world again! :)
I'm sorry for the amazing lack of posts! I really do love blogging but the problem recently is that my life has been SO exciting that each blog post would take a day to write! lol! So I have a bunch to blog about but I need to still enjoy my vacation and not just blog the whole time! lol!
This is my first time up in Door County and I'm already entirely in love! It's sooo perfect and makes you feel like your on the East Coast...and yet so close to my house! We are right on a little penisula in a town called Egg Harbor with only 250 people living in the town it's perfectly quaint! I'll post more pictures soon!
I love you all so much! Hope to be back at full power soon! :)

Gilberto's!

Last night we went to THE most popular place for everyone here on campus, in Jarabacoa called Gilberto's! It is a little "restaurant" on a sidewalk that just fries tons and tons of chickens! Ha!! It was SUCH an experience and pretty good food too! I know most people would be completely grossed out by the sight of this place...but I think I'm made for roughing it....I like things not so prim and proper and clean ALL the time....:)

Here's a picture of Nicole on our way down the mountain...I just thought it was so cool! She was probably worn out too from the shoot I had just done of their family! :)

Here is the one and only Gilberto's....they just found an empty plot of sidewalk and drape a tarp over it every night!! What a business!

Here is THE Gilberto himself! Doing what he does best!


When he saw me taking pictures he signaled me to come over to one of the workstations! Here is him teaching me how to flatten plantains (kind of like a banana but not sweet).

I now work for Gilberto's too!! hehehe!

Here is something that did scare me a little...this was sauce to put on your chicken...apparently it tasted like pickle juice...definitely not brave enough to try it...especially coming out of a Gatorade bottle! LOL!

Here I am sitting in the very "vibey" Giberto's....dogs and children begging and all!! I LOVE this country! :)

Caberete!

YAY!! We just got back from the beach last night and boy did I not want to leave!! They practically had to drag me out kicking and screaming to make me leave! lol;) jk.... But it was one of the most incredible and relaxing times!
Besides the couple times that I broke the rules and practically gave my aunt a heart attack it was good!! Thank God that He kept me safe in my ignorance! Oh the ways of an American suburban white girl...
The first night I was running along the beach and caught the eye of this surfing instructor but I just ignored him...on my way back he ran up behind me and started talking...I was caught off guard but decided to be friendly...we talked for a little while and then I walked up to my cottage. I told my aunt when I got back about it and she was like "YOU DID WHAT??" Apparently you DO NOT talk to the men here especially when you are by yourself and you definitely don't let them see where you live because apparently even just eye contact gives THE wrong sign! YIKES!!
Then the next night, my cousin and I went out for a walk along the beach to watch the sunset and started running a little bit...after awhile the sun started going down pretty quick so we turned around and headed back...once we got back it was dark and we saw my aunt standing out on a ledge over the beach looking for us...apparently you DO NOT go out on the beach at night because there are the crazy men again but this time there is no one around to save you!! AHHH!! My uncle was out for awhile looking for us apparently too! Oops! I guess I've got my mom's adventurous spirit a little too much!! :) At least I survived!!

Ok..onto pictures...this is called a publico it the public transportation down here! I saw this on our way to the beach...wow! :)

Syling while we were out shopping one day! Shopping here is INSANE!! They buy the old styles from last year in the US that were on clearance from like, Holister and Aeropostle, then bring it down here and sell it for crazy prices! lol! I really can't wait to shop back in the states!:)

Here is one of my favorite things do get down here!! Sweetened with REAL sugar cane too!! So fun!

The sky right above our Cottage....ahh!

A gorgeous Dominican sunset! The perfect thing about where we stayed is you can watch the sunrise AND sunset!

My cousin Nicole working the camera!

Ahh the sky!! One night while we were walking at sunset I almost cried at how overwhelmingly gorgeous it was!! God is quite amazing!! It was weird because it was similar to the feeling when I first walked into Times Square! I felt like I was overwhelmingly in love! ha!

Love the motion!!

The Nanny Estate....the place where we stayed...it is wonderful because it's mostly all families and some people live there full time!! How wonderful!

Right before we left...windblown hair and all!

Night time over Nanny's!

My view from our drive back...

Some more bulls on the side of the road!!



The drive back was QUITE interesting!! I was sitting in the back between my cousin and my friend with all the windows open in the car + being in a 3rd world country + everyone driving motor bikes = smelling pretty much every smell possibly known to man! After awhile and getting HIGHLY nauseous I decided to wear a sweatshirt over my head for the rest of the trip...pretty much saved my lungs! lol!!

Ahh the beach! I am determined to own a house on it one day!!
I love you all!! Back to more photo shoots!!
I'm excited for coming home because of all the thinking, reading, and praying that I've been able to do! I'm ready to get moving on some things!!:)

A Dominican Easter

Well this past weekend has been amazing!! I've determined that when I have a family I want to take them down here every year for Easter! It's such a wonderful and cultural time!
We started off Friday by heading down to the outdoor cafeteria for lunch, then I joined a bunch of students in watching the movie the Passion which was my 3rd time watching it yet everytime it's like I'm watching it for the first time! It's soooo real! Afterwards we did the annual cross walk up the mountain. Basically they have this big cross that everyone takes turns carrying up the mountain to the top of the campus and we stop along the way to sing songs and read about what all happened then! Really eye opening especially after just watching the movie! :)
Saturday was sooo fun and that will have a whole post on it's own!;)
And then this morning we all woke up at 5:30am to head down to one of the student houses that looks out over the whole valley to have a sunrise service! It was GORGEOUS and a great service at that too! :)
After the service we all headed down the hill to have an easter egg hunt while the guys on staff made breakfast for everyone! YUM YUM! Right before breakfast once everyone gathered together they had a contest on who decorated the best egg and boy were there some AMAZING ones!! You'll see some of them in the slideshow here!! I really love the community down here! We all do so many things together and when were not doing that we are just relaxing and doing nothing! What a life! This is really how it should be lived! Check out the slideshow here!!
Can't wait to post about yesterday!!
Super funny!
I love you all!!

YAY! In the Dominican Republic!!

Ahh....I think this is one of my most refreshing trips EVER! I only got in last night and already feel so relaxed and refreshed! I really needed this trip because things have been so incredible busy lately and I just needed some down time!
I'll still be shooting a little bit which is always my excuse for coming down here....but I always stay longer than that takes;) LOTS of fun things planned for the next couple weeks that I'll be posting about!! Right now I'm going to do some more chillin!!
Here is a video of my aunt Annie and I this afternoon!! Ahh! So fun!

Colorado...my third home!

Colorado now feels like my third home! Nashville...of course being my second..!:) I've been here for 11 days now and I decided yesterday,(which I was supposed to fly out last night...) to stay two days longer to help my friend Schlyce out with some things and do a little nannying:) I totally feel like a mommy right now...cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, running errands, babysitting, changing diapers, giving baths, and walking the dog! Thankfully I don't have my internet on my laptop to distract me! :) I have always LOVED cooking...but once my parents kept having more and more kids it would take almost all day to make something decent for 9 people so I pretty much stopped doing it...but it's kinda fun doing it for only 3 and a baby! Especially the dish part...where I'm used to having 2 dishwasher loads of dishes per meal...here they just run it once per day! It's so foreign to me! lol!

I am SO glad I decided to stay a little longer too because in this whole time of serving and putting all of my stuff aside God still was looking after me and honoring the time I was giving!! Last night Schlyce and I had THE best talk/dreaming/vision inspiring conversation and stayed up super late just talking about tons of different ideas and what God had planned for my life! I could hardly fall asleep last night...God has always used her to really speak into my life at JUST the perfect time! So I was so excited that He was faithful in continuing to use her as a REAL blessing and counsel!
I'll be home tomorrow night and will be able to catch up with everything then!! I miss everyone! It's weird being so disconnected yet so refreshing at the same time! I love you all! :)

Room to breathe...

This past week has been wonderful!! From helping out with Volunteers of America to Skiing in Vail to sitting in a steaming hot tub at night looking out at the mountains to sitting in pajamas talking about dreams and goals with some of my most amazing friends! It's been good for the soul:) I'm now out in Colorado Springs visiting some of our family's best friends, Schlyce and Brian and their adorable little daughter Lily. Schlyce and Brian's wedding was the 2nd wedding that I ever shot so they have a close place in my heart from that but even more so in the way that they dream and think and challenge me to come up higher! And literally too.... staying in their gorgeous new home on the foothills of Pike's Peak it's beautiful! I don't have internet on my computer because it is acting up for some reason so I'll have to post pictures once I get home on Wednesday...but I'm excited because I don't have cell service either so this will be a true retreat:) Which I definitely need!
Tonight, I met up with my new friend Sara Lazio for some Starbucks and we talked for a couple hours which is wonderful!! That is one of THE major perks of my job is getting to meet incredible people all around the world! She's so sweet too because she heard I like hot chocolate, from the post the other day, she bought me a SWEET hot chocolate pot! So I can be in heaven whenever I want!! :)
PS..I didn't take either picture(thank God for Google!) because I'm not on my own computer...I'll post real ones soon! :)
**Spellcheck courtesy of Natalie:)**

Tearing up the gnar!

Yesterday, Jenna, Crystal, Amy and I all went skiing for the day and it was perfect!! I wasn't sure if I would be able to ski very well since I broke my ankle last year...but thank God that it is stronger than before so I had no problems! :) Just a couple big wipe outs every once in awhile that resulted in lost pride then anything else! ha! The best part of the day though I think would be the fact that I wore jeans....now Jenna had been telling us a couple days earlier that people here in Colorado totally make fun of people who wear jeans because they can totally tell they aren't from around here! ha! That was for sure in my case! I didn't have a chance to get alot of ski gear before I left..especially since I didn't even know if I was going to ski in the first place...so once I decided to go all I had were jeans:) When we got there though the VERY first lift that we were getting on the lift guy was like "soooo we're skiing in jeans huh?? I hear that denim is the most water proof thing on the planet!" hahaha! Amazing! Here are some fun pictures from our day:) I love you all!! Time for bed..since I can't even keep my eyes open anymore!
PS...I learned that "Tearing up the gnar" and "the sicky pow" is skiers slang for cruising down the mountain and getting amazing powder...LOL!

Vail = Heaven

I'm sure when we all get to heaven it is going to look JUST like Vail...but hopefully maybe a little warmer;) I absolutely LOVE it here! I totally forgot how beautiful Colorado truly is! I'm definitely someday going to own something here! Ahh!
We arrived yesterday afternoon after a super full day of shooting for the AMAZING Volunteers of America...which I will post more about that along with a slideshow later on...but I can say that it was a major life changer! Incredible! :) I can't wait to show pics!
Anyways..we are up here now in Vail in our little cabin at the bottom of a huge mountain...I was asking about avalanches earlier today and apparently they are pretty common around here so I was kinda freaked out a little but I think we are hopefully far enough away! hehe!
We went to the little Vail ski village earlier today to shop and have a nice little lunch it was beautiful! After awhile we went to my favorite little shop now ever, Rimini. It was a little gelato and coffee shop, with THE most unreal hot chocolate in the whole entire world! I don't think anything you put in your mouth could compare! It was pretty much worth the whole trip! (I think that's the main reason why I want to own a place here;) I got smore gelato too...pure heaven!
Here is a little collage of our group: Me, Amy Nave, Jasmine Star, Jenna Walker, Shyla, Crystal Goss, and Liana!
I LOVE these girls soooo much! They are all so encouraging and each have such different personalities but everyone compliments each other so well! It's perfect!

Fun times!!!!!!!

Ok....Sooo I have a ton of fun announcements coming up in the next couple weeks that I'm super super excited about! The first one I'll be announcing this next week!! We decided to put together a little teaser for it.....;) CLICK HERE for the sweetest little teaser and look out on here in the next week for what it's all about!!! I'll give you a little hint...I get to work with some of the most amazing people in the industry for this one....and it obviously has something to do about LOVE! :) Check it out!

I'm heading out in a couple minutes for 2 weeks in Colorado!! Oh, how excited am I to FINALLY get a real vacation! The first day a couple of my friends and I will be volunteering for Volunteers of America and doing a photoshoot for their different projects! I'm really excited about that...because sometimes we can get SO focused on ourselves that we HAVE to take the time to invest it back into others! :) After that...we'll be heading to Vail for a couple days for some R&R, then I'll be heading to Colorado Springs for a couple days! Ahh! I will post more hopefully when I'm out there! I love you all and don't forget to look at that little teaser! :)

Family Time

Ahh! I finally got some time to put together the different video and pics from our trip to the Wisconsin Dells! It was SO much fun and it was wonderful just chilling! I do have to say though...we are already talking about family reunions because trying to get 9 people anywhere at a decent time in pretty much a miracle in itself...we have been doing smaller vacations at different times rather than the whole clan because there are soooo many different interests and places to go to! But I'm glad we were all able to go out and have fun together for a little bit...even though the scene may look like a scene from Survivor most of the time..haha!
One of the nights we were there my mom had us make children's books because they are SO stinking easy...it could just be a word on each page and a colorful picture and the kid would think it is a NY times bestseller! lol! You'll see my book(in which I was trying to give my mom a subliminal message with;) in this slideshow as well some other highlights!


We also got a lot of fun video like last time so here are some of the highlights from that too!


I hope you are all having a WONDERFUL Christmas Eve! I finally finished my Christmas shopping yesterday(which is a miracle because I only started on Saturday!) and now for some MAJOR wrapping presents time! :)
I'll post more tomorrow about my thoughts on Christmas...but until then...ciao!:)

Nashville!

Yay! I finally found my second home, Panera, for some internet! I made it out to Nashville yesterday afternoon. I LOVE it here so much and am definitely wanting to buy a place out here..not to live full time but just whenever I want... My amazing friend Brianna came and picked me up from the airport and we headed straight out for some site seeing and shopping! Brianna is someone that I could definitely say is a "kindred spirit" we can just talk and talk for hours about everything, and laughing most of the time! It's just so great! I'm so blessed by her! I took her yesterday to my favorite place in all Tennessee called Natchez trace. It's a long parkway that connects about 3 states. Anyways, it has a gorgeous REALLY high bridge that I love to just walk across and look out over the valley! It's so breathtaking!
She also took me to basically heaven, it's this place called West Haven. Really it's just a neighborhood of new houses but every house that they are building is my favorite! It's amazing...I think I'm going to buy a town home there or something! I'll post some pictures of it when I go past it today! YEAH! Love you all!

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!

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!! :)

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!

Ahh...

The past two days have been absolutely incredible! I thought I came down here to work which I will do in the next couple days but WOW! Yesterday my aunt and I had a super relaxing day, went on a walk around a old horse arena and just sat out in the sun for awhile! Totally what I needed! Then today I got to my cousins house and they were supposed to record all day today but it got put off a little which gave us a day off!! We sat by the pool most of the day and got some color finally!! It was amazing! I can't believe it's February and I'm doing this! Tonight we just got back from an interview that the girls did for a show called Total Axxess and it was hilarious cause their assistant Beka was tallying everything that they were saying during the interview! She is THE funniest person I've ever met so check this out: I love you all! Have a great night!!

Better than a hotel!

Last night my aunt picked me up from Belmont and we headed back to her house so I can spend a day with her! I'm so excited because whenever we hang out it's like there's no age gap it's sooo much fun!
Anyways, when I walked in the house my cousin Keeley who is so adorable showed me up to my room! How could a hotel beat this?? There was a candle and M&M's and to beat all Girl Scout thin mints!! I'm in heaven! :) Plus I woke up this morning and was shocked when I looked at the clock and it was 10am! I don't think I've ever slept in that late! LOL!
Yesterday was such a great day! I woke up pretty early and went on a walk around the campus which was so amazing because it's so gorgeous out! Afterwards, I went and talked at one of Chris's(Sarah friend) visual classes about photography! It was so much fun, this was my first time really public speaking and I had an hour to fill up which at first I was nervous about but after I got going it was like a rush!! I'm so addicted now!! LOL! Yesterday afternoon we went to an awesome art gallery and then did a hilarious little spontaneous photoshoot! Here is the **slideshow**