Monday, February 9, 2015

Happiness

Live life to the fullest, love someone so much you can't live without them, laugh so hard it makes you cry and be so happy all you want to do is smile :)

I believe happiness to be a choice; and like all choices, some are harder/easier than others.  This was a shirt that popped up on my pinterest the other day while searching for photography ideas, I absolutely love it!

It's very easy to get caught in a "everything is just perfect right now" phase.  I find this to be a little backwards because, let's face it, half the time it's an illusion to people that perfect is the new 'norm'. I believe that focusing on an attitude of happiness (regardless of everything being just so) is a much more practical option.  Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to give advice here, I understand that there are lots of struggles that everyone (INCLUDING ME) go through . . . but . . . that's life, and unfortunately, it'll be that way for quite a while, so we might as well try to be happy through it, otherwise, like the shirt above, we'll start to look forward to sleep for our happiest moments rather than living our happiness ;)

Jared is absolutely a wonderful comedian without even trying to be :) Just the other day we were out looking for a papasan chair (click here if you don't know what they are - I didn't know they were called that).  We walked through an expensive, odd taste, furniture store and found some random pieces of furniture . . . no luck in a papasan chair, but we found this gem!

Naturally, Jared wanted to sit in this one, as he tried to act like he owned the place . . .
He was trying really hard not to laugh :)


There's a quote that I love and am striving to live more fully:


The definition of insanity is "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results," so if you're looking for a way to be happier, I suggest laughing more, loving more, helping people more, and just smiling more.

Monday, January 5, 2015

Christmas Fun!

WARNING: LOTS AND LOTS OF PHOTOS :)

Jared and I had the wonderful opportunity to fly up to Philadelphia for Thanksgiving and visit Jared's Grandparents. We also gave them Texas mugs for Christmas . . . they were fairly large :D


AND because we were in Philly, we naturally had to try our first ever Philly Cheesesteak


We also got to see a man in their neighborhood carving the most beautiful thing in the snow :)
He was very talented.


Austin, Texas I don't think would ever get enough snow for something like that sculpture . . .
This is about what our snowmen/sculptures look like . . .


When we got back from our trip to Philly we had great time attending the Austin annual Trail of Lights 5k Fun Run :)  Here's some photos from that.


The Storm . . .


before the Rainbow :)



The beautiful Austin skyline with the Trail of Lights in front :)


The next weekend or so we packed up and took off to a number of places.
We started our Christmas adventures in Seattle, Washington
Which consisted of a TRON plane haha, 
it was pretty cool that we got to ride on one of the newer planes


We got to celebrate this cutie turning ONE (our niece Bella) :)


Then on Christmas, we gave these three hooligans some fun glasses


and Bella . . . well she didn't really want to wear them :P
Her dad sure tried to get them on though . . .


We were also able to get a family photo in :)
But I needed to do some test shots (make sure lighting was good and all that) 
SO, Jared helped me out :) love this guy



THEN our adventures took us to Jared's parents in Boise, Idaho

Jared messing with Sage on the left & River blowing spit bubbles on the right :)
Haha we love these two nieces of ours.


Again, we had another wonderful chance to take a family photo :)


And . . . I needed another focus point "tester" - perks of being married to the photographer :)
LOVE HIM :)


It was a wonderful Christmas adventure and 
we can't wait to see what this year has in store for the two of us :)
We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas holiday, we sure did.