Be Myself

Yesterday was a long day. These last few days have felt long. Good, but long. Japan feels like it was ages ago and though I have not even been in America for a full week (and I am still hitting the windshield wipers instead of my blinkers) I feel like I am picking up right where I left off. I dropped Brian off at the airport first thing yesterday and then I spent the rest of the day at the WPPI Road Trip in Sacramento. A lot of speakers. A lot of good information. A lot of new plans. Only problem is there are so many ideas I am afraid I might do nothing due to the paradox of choice. It was really good though. Inspiring. Overwhelming. I only have one year you know. To start a business before we move. Three years in the next place and the next. My life is not like everyone else. Due to that fact, here are the key points that I learned:

- I need to be myself
- Do what works for me in MY life
- Create MY business (MY brand, MY style)
- I am never too old to learn and I should always ask questions
- Just because I went to Brooks does not mean that I should know it all and I should not be embarrassed for not knowing it all cause no one does
- Also being a Brooks grad does not mean that I should have been able to immediately have a successful business and I should not let the length of this process get me down just cause I think I should be more capable
- Last thing was that there are MANY businesses out there. Many printer companies, album designers, "We do it all" companies.... so many. So many choices. So many successful photographers use different ones. There will always be something bad and good about each. I need to pick one and stick to it. I cannot switch every time I see a new great company. It doesn't matter what Joe Buissink, Jasmine Star, or Becker use. I need to find what works for my business and my life and run with it.

So, though I came out with many new ideas it is all kinda scrambled in my brain and due to the scramble the above is what I came up with to calm it and ease my hyper activeness. Below is a reminder to chillax. I am very happy to be back and be able to spend time with the family. Monday a bunch of us went to the river for a few hours and it was really awesome. I am overwhelmed with ideas and plans and the enormity of our transition right now, but I don't want it to control me. I want to take time to enjoy the little things and enjoy my family. I don't want my life to breeze by me. I want it to go nice and slow so I miss NOTHING.

Oh the traveling madness! Oh the incredible blog slacking! I definitely need to post images from the trip to New Zealand and Australia, but first I need to go through them. Upon arrival home in Japan we were rather busy packing up and preparing for our move so I haven't even had the chance to look through the images. We arrived in Reno to visit with Brian's parents on Saturday and are leaving today (Monday) to head over the mountain and visit with my family. Someday, and hopefully soon, I plan to go through all my images and post my favorite's from the trip. For now these happy snaps that I stole from Kristan's FB will have to do :)

Above is from our wondrous helicopter ride :) Oh yes, South Island of New Zealand, over the glaciers and landing to play in the snow. It was a glorious time! Below, you can clearly see us all quite happy to be in Sydney, Australia. Brian was unable to take enough time off to visit both countries so Kristan was my travel buddy for NZ and Brian met up with us in Australia.

Yes, we are officially back in America. I officially have jet lag (been up since 3:30am) and I am officially excited to be back. Our lives at the moment are quite official :) There are many plans going through my brain right now for my photography business and getting things started up again here in the states. I have great plans, and many are still in the works. I do plan to be posting more though and will keep everyone updated with said plans. I still have lots of traveling ahead of me before I settle in Florida. Plans are constantly changing and at this point I am thinking I may get there in mid-October rather than late September.

So, I will be making a greater effort in posting pictures from my ever changing life and updating as plans change and things happen. Maybe I can get some regular blog readers again :)

This pic... this is back in Japan. Enjoying one last picture of Brian's glorious scruffage before he shaved it... so sad it is gone :(

New Zealand - FAIL

Alright, well, here is a short and sweet update for you all! New Zealand is awesome so far! Above we have the best picture of the trip so far :D and below is me trying to distract myself from Kristan's attempt at killing us by driving on the left (I only had to remind her to stay on the left oh... 5-10 times!). There are tons of pictures, but I am having issues with certain applications that did not download properly before I left so this is it for a bit.

So we have been on the North Island so far visiting my long lost family (and seriously that is exactly how I feel about them!). So much family that I never really knew about. It is great getting to visit, but frustrating at the same time, cause we have so little time and there are so many all over. We will be coming back, that is for sure! Lots of beautiful country and beaches. 12 days is no where near enough time. So, yes, we are having lots of fun. Good food, great company, cool accents, beautiful scenery! Who knows when I'll have internet again, but I will update when I can!

Engrish

Above is some good Engrish for you. Probably the best I have seen in my time here.

I am leaving town tomorrow for New Zealand and then Australia. I am going to be gone for 3 weeks and when I get back we will have one week before we move back to the states! I can't believe the summer has gone by so quickly... I will miss different things here, but I am looking forward to what we have ahead of us :) I don't know that anyone is checking my blog anymore since I have been slacking, but I am hoping and planning to blog every couple of days while I am out exploring and photographing new places! So, please come back for some cool pictures :)

Happy Be-lated 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July! Brian and I had a lovely 4th celebrating on base with a good 'ol American BBQ and fireworks :) This was actually my first time photographing fireworks. I didn't get a ton of shots that I like and I blame my tripod for that. The stupid thing was too limiting on how high I could aim it so I basically just rested my camera on it. I think Brian may have got some better shots with his super cool tripod, but we haven't looked at the images yet.

For those of you who do not know, I only have two weeks left here in Japan. I leave for New Zealand on July 20 and will be going from there to Australia on August 2nd and then returning to Japan on August 12th where I will frantically be cleaning the mold off everything before it gets packed up and shipped off to America. Time is flying by and I am really excited, but will definitely miss this place. I plan to post pictures every couple of days of my travels so check back here to get updates on New Zealand and Australia! :)

Emily Lyn-Cook

This is Emily. She is four years old and super cute! Her mom and Aunt brought her and they were fantastic at getting the cutest little smiles out of her :) Her dad is American and her mom is Japanese and so she of course speaks English and Japanese and I seriously think that is THE coolest thing ever! I wish I could speak two languages, and it is awesome that she will grow up bilingual. So here is the cool bilingual four year old!




She was a great little model and was really workin' the camera!

PS. Yes, I changed the layout to my blog and I like it better, but I am still trying to figure out how to get my images bigger, cause that would be better...

FOUR Years!

Four years.... FOUR Years! I literally had to think about it for a minute last week as I realized our anniversary was coming up. Has it really been four years? That sounds like such a long time! That means that we have known each other for six years, and that is just a chunk of time. Now, please excuse the lack of recent pictures. I am at work right now and have not been on the computer at the house in quite some time (which is completely awesome!). So I am making do with stealing shots from my old blog :)

So, yes, four years. My favorite thing right now is that Brian is here. He has been home for about a month straight now and is not leaving anytime soon! I really don't even know what to say. Four years of marriage, Santa Barbara, graduating college, San Diego, Navy, Japan, Travels, moving again... so many big changes and yet we are still the same. We like to tease each other, use lots of sarcasm and movie/The Office quotes, and wrestle. It has been a great four years and I love that I am still learning things about him.

One thing I learned this last year is that he will never say anything bad about anyone. If he says someone is a good person you can take his word for it cause he wouldn't lie. If you ask him what he thinks of someone that isn't the greatest, he will honestly tell you that that person is not the greatest, but only because you asked. Otherwise he would just avoid talking about that person. It is funny to me that it took me so long to realize this, but it really wasn't until this last year that I realized he would say nice things about a few people and I never really believed him and then I would meet the person and say, "Wow, Brian, yeah he's a really cool dude". I know, I should believe him, but I am just skeptical. I have learned though that I don't need to be skeptical with Brian's opinion (on people that is :) So here's to 4 years! We're gonna head out to Yokohama and explore this afternoon, take some fun pictures, and enjoy Japan while we're still here! The picture below is just one of my favorites that Brian sent me while he was away. It's not often that I get to see some good scruffage on his face ;)