The Three Musketeers

Beamer and Cameo pictures

On Jessie's birthday, she wanted to hook up her little mare, Cameo, put on her show dress, and do some "professional" pictures...as professional as it comes when I'm behind the camera :) I thought some of you may enjoy seeing what it looks like when Jessie dresses up!!

 After seeing how her pictures turned out, I decided I wanted some of my boy, Beamer, so we hooked him up and took some of him. I just love him and can't wait to show him in the spring!!!

 

 

 

And this is him out of harness...I love the color on this picture!! Lightroom is awesome!

 

This is an ad that I made for him using the new pictures. It is the best one I have ever done, and it also got me my first real photo job. I have been asked to be the official photographer at an ADT (Arena Driving Trial) in May!!!!! I'm SO excited!

Is your glass half empty...or half full?

Life can be hard sometimes.

Today was just one of those days. I woke up exhausted because my little dog that sleeps in my room withe me got sick in the middle of the night and I was up cleaning up messes at the charming hour of 2 AM. 

Had a crazy morning trying to get chores done and get the girls out the door to piano lessons, and then held the fort down for a few hours with a very pregnant dog. While everybody else was gone, I sat on the couch next to Nina and worked on school - which right now consists of  studying the Westminster Confession of Faith and all the Scripture verses they use to back up their beliefs.

As soon as Mom and the girls got home, we had tons of groceries to unload, friends came over to borrow our truck and trailer, and we forgot to let Nina out...so she couldn't hold it any longer and let loose all over the kitchen floor. Nice.

Just as I settle back down on the couch to start school again, Mom gets an email from someone interested in our Papillon puppies, but they want new pictures. So, we pull out 5 squirming puppies and try to get them all to stay still and look at the camera at the same time while trying to convince the external flash on my camera to cooperate. We get the pictures done, take them back to Mom, and she looks at them. Rejected. Back out to the kitchen for "Take 2."

These pictures turn out pretty good, but when we go back to the computer, Mom has an email from a previous Papillon buyer who says that their dog twisted it's intestine a few months ago and died. 

By this time, it's pretty late in the afternoon and I head down to the barn to bring the horses in from the pasture and feed everybody, and one of the mares is sick. Really, really sick. She's laying down and has obviously been thrashing around for quite some time. Ever since we lost Steam Roller to colic, I just feel sick when I see a horse in the beginning stages. I run into her stall and kneel down next to her to see if she will get up. She doesn't, so I start praying desperately, bring the horses in double-quick and run up to the house to alert Mom and grab some Banamine (equine version of Aspirin). She looks hydrated, but when we try to walk her, she collapses and her legs start shaking. The Banamine finally kicked in. She started settling down and doing better, our friends bring the trailer back, we get the horses fed and settled in for the night, and turned the lights out in the barn.

 

As we started up to the house, Mom asked me if I'd heard about the little Papillon who died. I told her that Anna had told me, and then paused for a second. I looked at her and said, "Life is hard. Real hard. And pretty depressing at times." She nodded, smiled, looked around our beautiful property at our wonderful barn and awesome horses and said, "Yeah, but it can be really beautiful, too." She's right....so right.

 

It's pretty amazing how easy it is for us to get caught up in the little things that just annoy us. Sometimes it can be so hard to be content, and I know exactly what Paul meant when he said, " I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content..." It is a learning process...being content is not easy, nor does it come naturally, let me tell ya!

Yeah, it was a rough day. But I got quite a few hours to just pour over God's Word and read over and over the precious promises of salvation, justification, and redemption that it offers. It really depends on the perspective we are coming from. If we could only view our lives through God's eyes, how different we would think and act. How trivial these little things are. We are loved and cared for by the Creator of this universe, and He sends us exactly what we need at the time...sometimes He sends things to grow us, to assure us, to humble us, but whatever it is, He is working for our good.

So is life that bad? Not really!

Shooting!

We had a wonderful day out in the desert shooting guns with our church! It was soooo much fun, and so good for me because up till now, I have been deathly afraid of guns. I shot, and shot, and shot! I think total, I shot four different .40's, a 9mm, a 3" magnum 12 gauge, a .270, a .380, a .22-250, a .22 rifle, and probably more that I don't remember. But, tonight, I am way more comfortable with a gun than I was this morning!

We did all sorts of fun things like a trap shooting competition (which my dad won!), an impromptu handgun competition where you had to do push-ups or run around to get your adrenaline going, and more.

Thanks so much to everyone who let me shoot their gun (Mr. R, Mr. H, Brennan, David, Josie, and my dad)! I have tons of pictures, but need to edit them before posting. Here's a few fun ones...

Jessie with the .270

Brennan with his mean 3" magnum 12 gauge!

Josiah with his .22-250. I loved this gun!!

David with the AK 47

Caleb!!!!

Jessie with Brennan's shotgun...she shot it quite a few times, and has
a terribly sore shoulder to show for it. This thing kicks!!!!!

Me with Brennan's shotgun...one shot was enough for me :D

Brennan with his shotgun!

This is what happens when you shoot a can with a .30-.30!!!

Me shooting Brennan's .40.
(hmmmm...I wonder why he's laughing at me?!?!?)

Mr. H aiming at a clay pigeon

The winner of the trap shoot!

Don't worry...David didn't flatten Brennan...he's doing push-ups before
the impromptu handgun shoot off :D

Fiesta Bowl Parade Video!

Here is the video from the Fiesta Bowl parade we were in on New Year's Eve! This is probably better than pictures :) We had a wonderful parade, but I was so tired by the end.

After we got back to the trailer, we had to chase a big horse that got loose for a very long ways. I'll try to post the whole story at some point. Needless to say, all of our feet were raw!

Rich Mullins & Pictures

Recently, I have fell back in love with Rich Mullins' music. I left off listening to his music for awhile, but just in the past few weeks, I have started really listening to it again. The more I listen, the more I love it. He has the most original way of looking at things and it is so refreshing. 

One of my most favorite quotes from him is from his song "The Love of God." He says "There's a wideness in God's mercy I cannot find in my own...it keeps me glad to have been caught in the reckless, raging fury that they call the love of God." What a beautiful description! 

The other day I was looking through my pictures, and I found a couple pictures that seemed to go perfectly with some of the quotes from Rich Mullins' songs. So, I started editing and then I found more pictures, and I got totally carried away! 

Some of them turned out really neat. Most of the quotes on these are from Rich's songs, but the last three are Scriptures. I just liked the pictures and verses kept coming to mind that were perfect. 

Enjoy!!! If you click on the pictures, they will pop up bigger for you, and they're so much better in big form!

These next three pictures don't have Rich's quotes...they're from the Bible :)

For David

Some pictures I took of a friend yesterday...these are in order from my favorite to my least favorite. I am LOVING Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. It is the best photo-editing program out there - in my humble opinion.