Me + stress = BFF

Let's recap the last 4 months of my life, shall we?

January 21, hubs suddenly loses his job. Laid off the entire department. Huge shock, we never expected it or even saw it coming in any way. I start working gobbs & gobbs of overtime to pay the bills.

Sometime mid-February, hubs and I have an issue brought into our marriage that I have never talked about on here, and have no plans of ever discussing it on here. Sorry folks. Let's just say it was extremely hard and I still struggle with it some days.

Early March, I get a bad case of the flu. Or so I thought. The week after I peed on a stick, only to see 2 lines. Yes, I know this isn't a "sad" thing, but stressful? Absolutely. Life was already crazy, and now finding out that we're going to have "2 under 2", and to have a husband who had been laid off for about 10 weeks at the time just added to our stress level. Would he have a job by the time November rolls around, and where will we be at that time? Only God knows.

Then April rolls around and at this point we are thinking "surely it cannot get worse". April 9 I am called into the back office and am told they are terminating my employment. "Wrongful termination" and "Employment discrimination lawyer" are words that I hear frequently, whenever the subject is brought up by friends or family. Still trying to decide if I should pursue something or let it go... prayers on this subject would be appreciated.

So lets pause for a moment to recap: 2 incomes suddenly turned to 1 (not to mention, lost the 1 that carried us by far). Marriage struggles. Surprise baby #2... 1 income, unemployed for 10 weeks, how will we survive. 1 income suddenly cut to ZERO. No income, lots of bills, toddler and baby on the way to support. No health insurance any longer.

The following week, we decide we have no choice but to sell our house. Our home. Where we brought Jaxon home to, where we have created so many amazing memories in the last 2 years. Where we have poured our time and energy into creating a place that is truly our own. The thought of someone else living here makes my skin crawl.

Middle of April, hubs gets a call about a job. In Denver. 10 hours away. 6 month contract (or longer assuming there is still work at the time). Hubs accepts, lots of paperwork and waiting to follow. Oh yeah, and if you're not good at math... 6 months = November. When I'm due to pop out another child. So in 6 months it's possible he may be out of work, again... the only difference? I will be having a baby and who knows... maybe have no health insurance at that point again.

He will be leaving for Denver sometime in the next week. Jax and I are staying behind as we wait for the house to sell, then depending on what his job situation looks like at that time, will either move out there with him or stay back here... I really have no idea. So now I get to raise Jaxon on my own, take care of our house on my own, sleep alone, eat alone, come home to an empty house. Luckily I have plans to travel and spend time with my family, Tyler's family, and Tyler in Denver. So hopefully there won't be too many "alone" times, because I am not good at being alone. Yes, I have Jaxon, but he isn't the best at carrying on conversation. Although he sure makes me smile and makes my heart sing.

So... what do you think? Enough on our plate at the present moment? We are coveting your prayers and appreciate them. God is working in our lives in ways we cannot even see, but at this point, all we can do is trust. Trust, trust, trust. It's the word of the year for me.

This changes everything. . .

Jaxon will be a big brother in November!

2 under 2 ... here we come! As if life wasn't crazy enough already? :)

Twelve weeks to better photography: week five

Well, it's a good thing for my blog that this photography lesson has taken place or else I'm pretty sure my blog would be marked "dormant" or "non-existant" to some. But I'll be back... sooner than later. Sorry for my lack of posting.

Week 5's lesson is all about composition. Putting aside all the technical stuff this week, the 'teacher' gave us some tips and "rules" to go by, in order to produce a good picture without a lot of editing. Sounds good to me, considering I don't know how to edit well and don't even own an editing program.

Tip #1 -- Keep it simple by eliminating distractions in your photo. You can remove distracting elements from your photos by physically moving them out of the scene, repositioning your subjects in a better location, taking a few steps forward for a close-up shot, or decreasing your depth of field.
Tip#2 -- Apply the Rule of Thirds. I love this tip and use it frequently when I take pictures. The rule of thirds capitalizes on the fact that our eyes are naturally drawn to a point about two-thirds of the way up (or over) on a photo.
Tip#3 -- Keep an Eye on the Horizon. Place the horizon about 2/3 of the way up on the photo to keep the focus on what is below it (such as land or water) OR position the horizon about 1/3 of the way up on the photo if you want the focus to be on what is above it (the sky.)
Tip#4 -- Frame your subject. Use elements in the foreground of your photo to frame the center of interest. Architectural elements (such as arches or fences) as well as those found in nature work well for this.
Tip#5 -- Fill the Frame. Another tip that I use frequently. In addition to eliminating distracting backgrounds (tip #1) it's also important to eliminate wasted space in your photos. Allow your subject to dominate the photo (fill the frame) to give it more prominence.
Tip#6 -- Try a New Perspective. Make sure to examine your subject from different angles - a new view can change the perspective of the whole photo.

This week's challenge was to take a picture and use at least one of those "tips" in your picture. So here we go:

In this picture, I used Tip #1 by keeping it simple. A few of the original pictures I took had trees in the background, so I asked the person flying the kite to move to an "tree-free" area so I could reshoot the picture. I think I also used Tip #2, even though it might not be exactly 2/3 over in the picture, it is still more dominant on one side of the picture than the other. And lastly, I used Tip #6. Instead of shooting this picture standing up, I laid on my back in order to get more clouds and less other distractions.

The end! Can't wait to everyone else's pictures too!

Twelve weeks to better photography: week four

I was half-tempted to skip this weeks lesson, because I hate using the flash and I thought even in the lesson that her pictures that she took with flash vs no flash actually looked better without. But, I decided to be a trooper and stick to it anyways. See Week 4's Lesson here.

Not much to talk about this week because she was mostly saying how you can properly use your flash as a "fill flash". Basically, a fill flash is your normal flash. But in scenarios where you already have ambient light, your flash is merely "filling in" the areas of your photo that may be shadowed or poorly lit.

I also couldn't go outside like she requested because A.) i've been sick and B.) it's been snowing and is freeeezing here. So I stuck to indoor pictures and took them of my fav little man. Anyhoo, on to my pictures...
{no flash... much better in my opinion}
{with flash... overexposed and see the shadow in the background? not cool.}

I re-read the lesson and noticed that she talked about moving your subject away from the wall and if they had to be in front of a wall putting them in front of a dark wall. So I guess I failed this week. haha, oh well. Always next week. :)

Twelve weeks to better photography: week three

Woohoo... chuggin' right along, aren't we?

Lesson three is all about light. I don't know anything about light, in terms of photography, other than I hate using the flash. This was a great lesson focusing on how to set your Custom White Balance. If you're anything like me, before you read this lesson you were like "custom what what?" So I was excited to learn something new this week... especially if it meant learning how to take pictures with better lighting without using the flash.

Basically if you set your camera to AWB your camera will select what it thinks is white. So in a room where there is not a lot of natural light and you are having to use artificial lighting, your pictures will come across orangey and have a yellow cast to them. This is where learning to set your white balance comes into play. White balance is simply a fancy way of setting the color temperature of your image. The human eye is very adept at compensating for color changes in light and allowing us to view light in a very large spectrum. Most film cameras handle white balance in the film itself and you simply purchase film to match the lighting situation. Camera sensors, however, are not quite as intelligent, and they must be told what color the light is for a given situation in order to compensate for that color. To help with this, digital cameras come with some pre-set white balance settings such as Auto (AWB), Daylight, and Tungsten, among others. Properly setting your white balance for your lighting situation will greatly increase the impact of your photos and decrease the amount of time you spend editing them.

This weeks challenge was to take 3 pictures. First one with the AWB setting, second with the Tungsten setting, then the third you would set your own custom white balance. And without further ado... here's my pictures:

{AWB setting}
{Tungsten setting}
{Custom White Balance}

A HUGE difference, right? It's not always the most convenient thing to carry around a big piece of white paper in order to set my custom white balance every time I'm out taking pictures, so that's why the camera has lots of different settings for you to choose from, instead of always defaulting to the auto white balance. But for the important pictures, you'll definitely see me sportin' a big piece of white paper. :)

I am seriously loving these lessons and seeing all of my other "classmates" pictures too! To see their pictures, go to "our host" Meredith's blog and see her post along with everyone else's!