Birthday Bliss

I turned twenty-seven years old last week.  27!  I honestly still feel like I could blend in with the high school crowd, however when I look in the mirror and see more and more worry lines surface, I'm annoyingly reminded that I am indeed approaching, , thirty!  How can that be?!?!


In years past I haven't been much a fan of my birthday.  Birthdays were fun up until I turned eighteen but after that they lost that certain amount of excitement of turning a year older.  So when my birthday came around this year I didn't really look at it much differently than any other day.  My husband, however, had something else in mind.  


He went above and beyond himself to make each part of my day special.  It started off with little surprises in the morning and the surprises didn't stop until we went to bed.  His goal for my birthday was to make me feel extraordinarily special and I must say that he more than succeeded.  What a guy!

I was given several gifts throughout the day, always thinking they were my one and only gift, but my "big" gift was saved for during dinner.  We went to Hu Hot per my request with Alex's dad and two brothers.  I think he was saving this gift to give to me when there would be witnesses to capture my reaction. :)  I don't remember exactly what the card said but after reading it I knew that his gift had something to do with photography.  As many of you know, it wasn't unusual for me to take over a thousand pictures in one month but the past four or five months I have lost my passion for taking photos. Correction, I haven't lost my passion but rather gotten so frustrated with not being able to take the quality of photos that I'd like that I decided to stop all together.  So my husband, being the intuitive and sensitive man that he is, found a solution to my photographing hiatus.  He scheduled for me a six-hour, private, one-on-one session with a photography instructor at the Rocky Mountain School of Photography!  I can honestly say that I think this was one of the best birthday presents I have ever gotten.

This last Saturday was my big day!  I have to admit that I was so nervous and giddy about this day that I literally felt like a little kid on the first day of school.  I met him at 8:00 and we got started right away.  He got a baseline for what I already knew and we just went from there.  We basically did book stuff for the first four hours and then he set me loose with a few assignments to complete for the next day.  I spent the rest of the afternoon taking photos and let me tell you, it was heaven!  The next day he critiqued my photos and answered the questions I had, and then he taught me a little bit about composition and photo editing.  It was exactly what I needed to give me that boost into wanting to get back into taking pictures.

Being a stay-at-home mom I often feel like I don't have any skills to offer society.  I don't go to a job and contribute to making a business successful, I don't get a paycheck for the hard work I put in, and there never seems to be any recognition for the work that I do do.  Sure, I can be really good at wiping down counters and making lunches, but that just doesn't satisfy.  No one ever comes into our house and says, "Wow!  That's a marvelous pile of laundry that you just folded!"  Photography, however, is something I can be good at (hopefully) and see lasting positive results.  My kids will most likely be annoyed with my constant need to take pictures of them, but someday...someday...they will be grateful for the memories they can see in a photograph.

So, this year's birthday was definitely memorable.  After telling Alex that he gave me one of the best birthday presents that I could remember he replied, "Well, crap!  What am I supposed to do next year?", to which I quickly replied with, "There's always diamonds.".

Love you, A! :)