Blog – Page 37 – SidebySide Photography

Portugal

Well, we’re leaving for Portugal tomorrow! I think we’re both finally starting to feel excited. We’ve been so busy this summer and haven’t had a break at all. Even the last couple days have been crazy editing weddings and getting everything together for the team. I will try to keep this blog updated while we’re away, but I have no idea if we’ll have the internet at all while we’re gone. Since we’ll be tent camping right by the orphans’ summer getaway (i.e. building with beds out in the boonies) I highly doubt we’ll see much technology. We, of course, will be bringing our cameras and a video camera so when we return, there will be plenty of pictures and a video or two. Where would we be without our technology?? So anyway, here’s a new picture of our team. We lost one member and gained another so this is the most recent shot.

For those of you who don’t know what we’re doing…we are leading a trip of 10 of us “young adults” to run a summer camp for a group of 55 orphans. It should be fun.exciting.overwhelming.tiring.awesome.exhausting. you name it! I’m especially excited because most of our team has never done a missions trip besides Mexico. I just pray that this experience will be a positive one for them and for the missionaries we’ll be serving. If you are more interested in what Paula and Spencer are doing in Portugal, check out their blog at: www.fourwildgeese.blogspot.com

Please pray for us while we’re gone if you could! We’ll keep you posted as we can and we’ll see you all soon!

play things to do

Batman

Normally we’re not people who are up incredibly late, but when there’s a movie we know will deliver, we’re willing to do it! We went to the midnight showing of the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight, last night. Did it deliver you might ask?? YES, yes it did!I won’t spoil anything, just want to thank Christopher Nolan for deciding that the Batman series needed a little re-doing. If you haven’t seen Batman Begins, definitely look into it and then follow it with this one, they are amazing.

I was also very surprised with the hundreds and hundreds of people also watching the midnight showing. I hate when I pay $10 for a movie only to have the experience ruined by people who want to talk through the whole thing. But last night, when the first credit came on, everyone cheered, then were silent for the entire movie, no cell phones or anything, it was amazing. Everyone was so respectful of each other (either that or tired). All in all, great movie experience and well worth my $10!

If you saw it, what did you think?

celebrate play reminisce things to do

life moves

I feel like life has been flying by. I am a busy person, always have been, I like to keep busy and have lots of hobbies, jobs, activities all going on at once. It’s nice a lot of the time, but sometimes I just get run down, or overwhelmed. Another side effect is that life seems to whiz by and I have to slow down to enjoy it and that’s hard for me. We’ve already been married 8 months, started a business and are planning on going to Portugal in August (more to come about that)…but I feel like I was just wedding planning yesterday!

I’m very inspired by many blog writers that I know. They are so good at keeping up their blogs and keeping them interesting. I am definitely in a mood to do that! I doubt anyone actually reads our blog, especially since I never really told anyone about it…so mostly it’s just for me to be able to reflect on the craziness that is my life. And have something a little more personal since our business one is so…well…business-y. So, here’s a few snapshots of the last month and I’m going to try to blog more often so I can actually devote one blog per activity instead of lumping them all into one like I’m about to do 🙂

So, 2007 was the year of weddings. I think we went to like 10 or 11 (including our own!) So many of our friends have gotten married lately and that used to seem crazy to me but now it seems normal because what is crazy is friends having babies!! I think this year will be the year of babies! Tiffany had her Caleb in March and a few of my friends are currently pregnant. That really makes me feel time fly. Little Caleb is so cute and such a blessing!

When I lived in Santa Barbara for school, I used to be a mentor for Jr. Highers. Well, one of my former students is Katie who just got married on June 28th! That was really crazy and made me feel a little old 🙂 It was really cool to see all my old Santa Barbara friends and see Katie and her new husband Jason, congrats you two! It was really fun to actually attend a wedding. Lately we have only been working at them and so it was nice to be a guest for once.

And of course, seeing my new name on a party favor is still very exciting!

The wedding was actually in Solvang so of course we got there very early and had some goodies, wouldn’t you?

Very pretty trees and vinyard, a nice location, but very very dirty!!

Ahh, my favorite time of summer, the Del Mar Fair…err…San Diego Fair, whatever! Anyway, this is one thing I have rarely missed. We have always gone as a family every year and now the gentleman and I are making new traditions. The Fair can get pretty boring, I mean same animals, same food, same displays. So, this year we tried something new. We did a “one day” contest. It’s a photo shoot. We got there at 3pm, they told us the contest and out we went for 2 hours trying to capture our assignment. Since the fair theme was “Summer of Sports”, we had to incorporate a whiffle ball into our picture. He won 3rd place! It was just fun getting to see the fair in a different way. OH, and don’t forget the free wine tasting we do every year, woot woot!

We also submitted two of our SidebySide videos and won 2nd and 3rd place! YAY. Now we are “Award Winning” SidebySide Video 🙂

And about baseball. I’ve never been much of a fan of watching sports on TV. I usually watch the Super Bowl only for the commercials (of course) but baseball is something that is to be seen in person. There’s something so fun about being at a game with 30,000 other people cheering and being all excited. Plus, Petco Park is just an awesome ball park! So we saw a winning game last night, (bet many of you haven’t seen one of those this season) and it was great. I ran into my grandma there and we took this awesomely awkward picture! It looks like Kelly and the gentleman are on a date and Ryan and I are two “3rd wheels”…awesome! Plus, we were talking about the olympics and saying that we don’t have any great rivals like we used to with Russia and I loudly said, “well, what about North Korea” as a joke and right after I said that, this Asian family sitting right in front of us all turned to look at us. Whoops! They probably didn’t hear what we were talking about at all, just the “KOREA” part…haha. Oh well. Then I had them take this picture of us…so hopefully they realized we weren’t saying something racist or something! hah.Anyway, there’s my blurb.

Stay tuned. I have a few exciting things coming!

kids people to see places to go

The Purple Palace

Well, we have been horrible bloggers! (not that I ever promised anything, but still) We’ve been so busy with work and then our video business and we’ve definitely given more love to the SidebySide Video blog.

Anyway…here’s a little of what’s been going on. Along with working with the Post-College group at church, now called The Gathering, we’ve started working on a new ministry which is called JaMM (justice and mercy ministry). We’re working on trying to find ways that our church can partner with other ministries that are already in place regarding human trafficking, sex trafficking, orphans, widows, etc…

We got to go down with some others yesterday to Mexico to check out The Purple Palace. It’s a safe place where children of prostitutes and drug addicts can go to live. Some of these kids have had horrible things happen to them and this is a second chance for them. They get to live there with food and clothing, go to school and learn about Jesus. It’s pretty awesome. The other great thing about it is that it’s in Tijuana maybe 5 minutes walking distance from the border. So there could be tons of quick little service projects that small groups could go down there for. These kids need to be shown the right kind of love and so we’re excited to see what we can do! Here are some pictures we shot yesterday:

The Purple Palace: yes it’s purple

My new little friend Carmen

Another little one

In one of the dorms

To see some more pictures, go to my flickr account.

california places to go

The Queen Mary

So this past weekend, I took the gentleman to stay on the Queen Mary for a late bday present since we’ve been so busy. I had visited it (along with the Spruce Goose) when I was a kid but never knew that they turned it into a hotel! Apparently it’s haunted, so then we HAD to go there! And of course all we did all evening was run around taking pictures 🙂

We were bad…there weren’t a lot of people out at night and we found a few open gates that I assume were meant to be closed since all the rest were and we climbed some stairs I assume weren’t meant to be climbed 🙂 We looked inside those big smoke stacks. There was nothing in them but junk, it was boring, but dark so it freaked me out a little…haha.

And the gentleman has been growing out his beard…isn’t it amazing?? He’s been called: “Chuck Norris”, “A Terrorist”, and “Distinguished”… Maybe he’s a distinguished
terrorist, did anyone think of that!!

Then we ran around The Ports of Call and had a yummy lunch watching the seals swim by.

All in all, it was a good little getaway. Everyone needs to get away even for just a day and a night. Anyway, we recommend staying at the Queen Mary. You might not get a good night’s sleep though, the walls are thin and their generators run all night. But we didn’t see any ghosts, haha. Someone’s alarm clock went off at 5am but there wasn’t anyone staying in that room so we called to have them get someone to turn it off. Of course things like that don’t get fixed easily. The guys were on their walkie talkies trying to open the room. Someone’s keys didn’t work, they couldn’t find the other guy. I swear, how does anything ever get done!! So around 5:45 we were finally able to go back to sleep. Oh well. If things like that didn’t happen, how would we ever appreciate efficient and competent people? Plus, it’s just fun to laugh at later…

and finally….We’re changing our business name. It’s now and always going to be SidebySide Video. We had too many problems with the other name and website so we’re going with this. The site is easier now. www.sidebysidevideo.com (we’re updating it so look back soon to see the new site with videos!) and the new blog is: blog.sidebysidevideo.com

🙂

play things to do

I totally agree…

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