Babies love the OSF...

I'm lucky and here's why:

I've got two and a half willing subjects to photograph every couple of months, when my need to photograph takes over my life and I find myself photographing my own shoes just to get pictures taken.

They are very cute willing subjects.

I'm also lucky because I've got this guy to tag team with now:

(He's so hot with a camera bag strung over his shoulder.)

Unfortunately, not all of my two and a half subjects were so willing on this particular day:

You may have noticed that in almost every picture, Zo is looking slightly off camera.

For instance, here:

And here:

And here's why:

I love that guy.

And Jen, Justin, and Zoey too! (Even if Zo loves Chris more than me!)


See Chris' pictures at his Flickr site. See the rest of mine at Shutterfly.

Waiting...

Chris and I went and looked at a place this evening.

It's awesome. I really like it.

It's even got those really nice, smooth, clean looking maple cabinets in the kitchen and all throughout the house.

I really like those really nice, smooth, clean looking maple cabinets.

I'm smitten.

Afterward, we drove around the neighborhood to see what was nearby. Found a Mexican food place. Figured we should make sure the place has good nearby rolled tacos.

It does.

We're putting in an offer tomorrow... please pray, or cross your fingers, or whatever you need to do for us!

Happy Wednesday!

Hello, blogger people who've managed to find their way back to the ol' blog, despite my serious lack of updating skillz lately! I just had the sudden urge to update. Anything. Just to update this thing. How's everyone doing? I'm feeling fabulous, mostly because I just made a wonderfully warm and cozy dinner of tuna melts and Campbells' Vegetable Beef soup (which really doesn't require making, I suppose, more than just heating), and the OSF has supplied me with a delicious margarita to complement.

Anyway, tonight is a very special night. Tonight... we address our Save the Dates.

(PS: Don't abbreviate Save the Dates. It comes out so wrong. Chris abbreviated it when emailing our wonderful production manager (aka save the date and invitation designer) Cody, and Cody emailed back, "You're giving me what?!?!")

(PPS: Yes, I just used parenthesis inside parenthesis. When you're an English major, you're allowed to manipulate the rules of grammar.)

So we're chilling here, eating dinner, sipping our margaritas (or White Russians, if you're the OSFs, and watching the previews before The Blind Side starts. Which I hear is a fabulous movie. We saw it on a preview for our last week Netflix rental and bumped it to the top of our list immediately. Along with The Time Traveler's Wife and the Book of Eli. Well, I don't care so much about the latter but Chris does, and the preview was there, so I guess that's what we'll be watching next weekend, probably as we go through the mass amounts of wedding stuff we realize we have yet to do.

So that's my quick update for Wednesday. And now I must go, because the bartender bonus effect is setting in, and if you're not Ryan you won't know what that means, but if you are Ryan you'll be sitting at your laptop smirking right about now.

(PPS: Hi, Ryan.)

First Family Reunion

There is hot weather.

There is lots of food.

There are questions about wedding plans.

There are golf courses and resort rooms.

There are cousins.

There are many sleeping in hours.

There are extremely late nights.

There are alien movies.

There are balloons.

There's marriage advice.

There's secret meetings.



It's glorious.

In honor of tonight's Tony Awards...

... me with John Gallagher, Jr. I like that guy!

June 10, 2010

All these years of taking a bazillion pictures have finally paid off. Today, while I was browsing through some old photos, I thought, "Hey. Let's see if I've got a picture from this day from any of the last few years."

And as it turns out, I've got a picture for this day from the last four years.

Let me tell you. It's pretty awesome to look back through some digital files and be able to say, "I knew exactly where I was four years ago." 

I seriously need to get back into picture of the day mode.

But. Until then. Memory Lane?

Memory Lane.

On this day, in 2006, I was celebrating Gwen's 7th birthday. (On Monday night, we celebrated her 10th.)

On this day, in 2007, I was getting ready to move out of my fabulous apartment, away from my fabulous roommates (except Jenna, who stuck with me). And Jenna and I stopped to take one last photo shoot in our amazing room, with our amazing three bed set up that we all loved. (Mandy belonged to the other bed, in case anyone's wondering, but you can see here her mattress is already gone. I miss Mandy.)

On this day, in 2008, we were in the middle of the Great Couch War of '08. Where we each brought home a couch that everyone else hated and than had to sell on craigslist. This was Jenna's contribution, what we like to call the Not-a-couch. The Not-a-couch was scheduled to burn on what became known as Not-a-couch-burning-beach-bonfire night. It currently resides on our back porch. Still.

On this day, in 2009, the OSF gave me flowers because I was sick and he was leaving on a family trip and we had just started dating and we were all cute and mushy gushy like that. He happened to pick out a bunch of beautiful Gerber daisies, and I happen to think Gerber daisies are fabulousl, which was a happy coincidence.

And now here we are, today, 2010... and I had no picture. And it's dark, so no good picture was going to be had. So I told the OSF, hey, get over here, we're going to take a picture with my webcam!

And this is what I got***:

Love that guy. He makes me laugh.

Even though he wouldn't take me seriously about my "but I always take a picture on June 10! I just found that out!" argument.

*** Disclaimer: That is NOT a hickey on my neck. It is a bug bite that happens to look redder due to the Cortisone cream I just used.. I have never had, nor do I intend to have a hickey. Even after I'm married. It's just gross.

Just Another Manic Monday

I'm pretty sure I've used that title before, but it just fits, you know?

How was your Monday? Mine went something like this:

Did not want to wake up (who does on Monday morning?)
Went to work
Began grading Andrew Emmel's Business and Careers homework.
Explained to Andrew why I put Incomplete all over his work when he chooses not to answer #5 (the essay question) on every section.
Said hi to Nephi. Asked if he wanted to do Algebra tutoring, which I had prepared for on Friday.
Set up math tutoring in the back room. Today we did factoring by grouping, and learned the torture of factoring by grouping trinomials.
Welcomed Andrew and Francis to our math tutoring club.
Had fun tutoring math.
Really enjoyed seeing Nephi totally get it.
Felt really glad that I've been keeping up on his work.
Lunch time.
Left work.
Got gas.
Paid rent.
Got to Chris' place and settled in for homework in the air conditioned condo.
Read almost the whole chapter. Even watched the online bonus videos on direct instruction.
Fell asleep.
Woke up.
Went to Gwen's tenth birthday party.
Was really sad that Gwen is ten.
Loved hearing her talk about the zillions of books she's reading.
Saw a lot of myself in her.
Talked with Mike about teaching.
Talked with Jessica about the wedding.
Showed off my ring to Virginia and Genessee.
Tried to teach everyone what my new last name would be.
Hugged everyone good-bye.
Came back to the condo. The Monday night crowd was there for TV and dinner.
Talked with Chris and Cody on the porch while they barbecued chicken.
Learned we couldn't get our first choice videographer.
Learned of a new videographer that Cody knows.
Looked at the first engagement photo that was sent to us by Rico and Rachel.
Watched as Cody worked his magic to spiff it up and drop it into our save the date template.
Got really excited. It's cool.
Set up at the kitchen table for more homework.
Did not get any further in homework and opened up Jen and Justin's photos instead.
Opened my flickr account to upload to.
Became frustrated with flickr.
Made a shutterfly website to upload to.
Loved the shutterfly website.
Opened my book again for homework.
Decided to write a blog instead.

Team Trementozzi

So after our engagement session last week, Chris and I couldn't wait to get outside with our cameras. Luckily,  I had a date coming up with Jen, Justin, and Zoey to do some family pictures. Chris borrowed some lenses from work (Canon, for me, he had to just use his ol' kit lens), and we practiced a bit at our Memorial Day bbq. Chris even went scouting around Mission Trails for a good place to take our pictures. He found an adorable little park in a quiet neighborhood up there, complete (to Jen's delight) with thistles and miscellaneous pretty weeds.

Miss Zo was not a happy camper most of the time, despite our post-nap photo jaunt. We did manage to get some happy baby family pictures, but for the most part we had to keep the trio pictures pretty simple in order to keep her attention. You can't tell it in this picture, but she's actually looking past the camera at Chris- whom she adores. Jen says Zo's in love with all the dark haired guys.

When Zoey wasn't having it anymore, Chris kept an eye on her while we began some more artsy, amidst the thistles pictures. Seriously, these two are just so cute. I'm so happy they were all about sitting in a pile of weeds for the look we were going for. Best guinea pigs ever.

I was using Chris' work's 24 mm lens for these ones... you have to get super close, but you get so much extra width than with my 50 mm. I'm a little bit in love with that lens. And the zoom lens. Zoom lenses are fun.

So this was our first official tag team photo shoot. Yay for Team Trementozzi! Although... that is kind of a mouthful of a name... maybe we'll need to come up with something snazzier. Any suggestions? ;)

Currently I am...

... eating the beef and broccoli dish I fell in love with last month
... sitting next to the love of my life
... going through the gazillion pictures from our Jen/Justin/Zoey photo shoot today
.... not doing any homework
... not doing any wedding stuff
... really enjoying myself.

c:

Memorial Day

One of my students asked me at school this week if I would ever marry someone who was in the military, or if it would just be too hard. Sheesh. Where do these kids get these loaded questions from?

I told her a story about my friend Jon from college, who had a girlfriend break up with him when he sat her down one day to make sure she understood what the Air Force meant to him, and that flying for our nation was his place in life. She broke up with him. She couldn't handle it. 

Anyway I'll always remember this story he told me as we drove to a $5 country concert in Lakeside years ago. His dedication is remarkable, and I'm so glad he did find the right girl eventually- he asked her to marry him on a trip to Korea earlier this year.

So would I ever marry someone in the military?

I'm just glad I don't have to make that decision.

Along with pondering these kind of thoughts on Memorial Day, I also spent the day with my favorite person in the world, as well as the other Ch(K)ris' and their wives. We barbecued up at Mel's mother's house while Holz and Mel were housesitting.

I watched my babe swim:

Ate some fantastic carne asada and chicken:

And watched this guy eat. everything. all. day. long.

Happy Memorial Day! Thank you for everyone who does what they do to keep us safe. I love you all.