Today is the day!

Well...today is the day! We are scheduled to close on our new house at 3 p.m. I am totally excited, and a little nervous as well. Not only will we be moving to a new house, but it will be a completely different environment than we are used to. For one thing, we will have a yard! I don't know what my kids will do with themselves! We are also leaving the church group we have been in for 5 years, which is exciting, but also a bit scary as well. I was told by my very observant daughter that not only does she have to make all new friends, but so do I. Too true. I hope we can find and make some friends in the neighborhood that will make us feel welcome and won't be too judgmental. I always worry about how people are going to respond to the sight of my daughter's very prominent facial birthmark...even though we are getting it treated and it is looking so good in comparison to what it started out as! I guess every mother is overly protective in her own way, and this is mine. I hate it when new people ask, "What is wrong with your daughter's face?" To this question I generally have 2 initial reactions, neither of which I act on. The first reaction is to punch the person in the face. The other reaction is to ask them, "Nothing, but what is wrong with your brain?". As satisfying as those reactions would be, at least one of them could land me a night in jail, so I generally opt for the polite approach of calmly explaining about her birthmark and the subsequent treatments. It's really amazing to me how judgmental and rude people can be.

Anyway, wish us luck on our closing. We have been completely debt-free for a week now...no mortgage, no student loans, no car payment...so now we will have a mortgage again, albeit a relatively small mortgage...but it was still nice to feel like we had no financial obligations and a huge chunk of money just sitting in the bank gathering interest. :)

Tori and Dustin

I spent last weekend in Idaho and Washington. I flew up to Spokane in the morning the day before my cousin's wedding and spent a lot of that day running around with my aunt and cousins and then taking Tori's bridal portraits that evening. We left the house at 7 p.m., tried to break into the project office where we were taking the portraits, and ended up having to have Tori change into her gown out in the great outdoors. We only were able to shoot for about 1/2 an hour, but we got some pretty nice shots all the same. Click here to see one of my favorites.

The day of the wedding was pretty hectic, but the wedding was wonderful (of course) and we had fun shooting more pictures! Here are 3 of my absolute favorite shots from the temple: