This too shall pass...

Last Sunday started as a normal Sunday. We woke up, enjoyed the quiet morning and casually got ready for Church. Even the time at church was quite normal. It wasn't until we returned home and had lunch that the day was ruined. At about 3:30 I started to notice a weird pain on the right side of my back. At first I thought that it was just a weird cramp, but thirty minutes later it hurt so much that I had to lay down. For the next several hours I was in more pain than I have ever felt in my life. It was so bad that as I was wincing and trying to bear it, I was also trying to come up with some way to express the pain to somebody else. This is what I came up with: It felt like painful unpassable gas mixed with a cramping muscle and an enduring feeling of being kicked between the legs. Yes, it was that bad. Finally at about 8 o'clock Laura looked up an urgent care facility and drove me to see a doctor. Long story short, I was experiencing my first kidney stone. I asked the doctor how long this sort of thing can take and he told me that it can last for up to a week. I am grateful that mine passed early the next day (less than 24 hours later). It is truly incredible that such a little thing can cause such a tremendous amount of pain.

5:30am and worth it

We went running today, like we do almost everyday, at 5:30am. It's quite early, but at least we don't have to run in quite as much heat as we would if we went once we felt like getting up. Anyway, we have seen some pretty fun sites on our run. We run along an irrigation canal, and have seen some jumping fish (some have jumped up to 3 times in a row!), a few turtles, and some lovely sunrises. Well, today I think we saw the best site yet! We saw this:
Okay, so this isn't the exact crane we saw, this is complements of a Google image search. However, we did see a crane this morning (and it looked just like this one). It was awesome. It had to be around 4 feet tall. We ran right by it... probably within 5 feet of it. I thought it would get scared by us and fly away, but he just stood there in all his majesty and watched us as we ran by him, twice! So, at least for today, running 5 miles at 5:30am was totally worth it.

I Love California!

I shot another wedding in Cali last weekend. I just love it there. It was great to be with family and friends, and to cool off a little. The wedding was for my cousin Amy and her husband Brian. It was a ton of fun. I was a little worried about the pictures since Brian has a hard time with the whole PDA thing, but with the encouraging words of family & friends, and my persistence ever since the engagement shoot, Brian warmed up to the idea of kissing Amy for the camera, and it went great! I flew out to Cali on Wednesday and got to go to the temple with my family that night. Then, it was up to girls camp Thursday where we picked up my mom. Friday, my mom and I went out to LA so I could scope out the temple grounds to find good picture spots (and Joseph drove out to Cali), Saturday was the wedding, and Sunday Joseph & I came back home. What a busy trip! The one thing I am finding is a challenge when shooting weddings, is that the family wants to spend a lot of time doing family pictures, but then don't leave much time for the bride and groom to do their shots. I get a lot of pressure that luncheons are starting so to try to hurry it up. I walk away feeling like what I have done is good, but also that I could have done so much more. There are so many other ideas in my head! Maybe as I do this more often I will figure out how to help other family members see that they will want these bride & groom pictures just as much (and the bride and groom especially will want them). And... I'll probably get faster too. But, here's a little taste of what I was able to do. I'll post more on my photo share site when everything is edited. Enjoy!