Easter 2012

We landed in Portland, OR, got in the car with my younger brother and his girlfriend (a.k.a. the Jordans) who were kind enough to pick us up in our car and drove to Bainbridge Island, WA for Easter. It was a long day of travel, but I really can't complain when part of it was a flight home from a fantastic vacation.

It was a short visit, but a great one, nonetheless. It could only have been more complete if my brother Jared was there (instead, he was at our house because of work. Irony!) and maybe a dear cousin or three with my other aunt and uncle and their families. Still, it was great to see my parents, the Jordans and my aunt and uncle. Easter is fairly self explanatory.. but here are some pictures anyway. Also, I got to try my hand at some family pictures, which was fun.

The cooks in the kitchen

Easter Eggs! Which came in...

Easter 'baskets'! Basically, my mom rocks and even though we're
all grown adults.. she still made us Easter baskets!

(This was the fun inside the bag!
Isn't my mom great!?) :)

Sisters

Our hosts, Aunt Sandy and Uncle Rodney

My parents

I couldn't pick just one.

The Jordans

Us

The obligatory family dinner table picture :)

We took the ferry over to Seattle on the way home, and I had to take the opportunity to try out my wide angle lens. 

Spring Break in Mexico

This was a fantastic vacation. One of those vacations that actually felt like a vacation. I returned home fully rested, rejuvenated and refreshed. It was also extra special for the following reasons.

01. Blake and I work a lot. Specifically, in March we worked an extra lot. We were so ready for some extended quality time together. We just love hanging out and that darn work is always getting in the way.

02. We were returning to the same place that we went on our honeymoon, two and a half years ago. I thought we might go back there for our 5th anniversary, but it just happened to work out for spring break this year.

It was so fun to relive our honeymoon a little and so incredible to see how much we've grown since we were there last. We both agree that our honeymoon was magically perfect. Yet, we also agree that our love has done nothing but grow since our magical time two and a half years ago. It is a total credit to God's faithful love and good work in us. Sitting in the same lounge chairs and taking long walks on the same beach really drove home how much greater marriage gets every day when God is at the center of it. We just walk through life a little closer now than we did before. We know each other better and we communicate better - usually with fewer words. Not surprising changes, just more obvious because we were in the same environment but a few years older.

03. Our good friends Jason and Whitney Saura were down in Cabo for spring break the same week we were. Whitney's grandma gave them use of her timeshare as a Christmas present and it happen to work out for us to be there at the same time (different resorts, but not too far).

And now, here are some pictures. Oooh the pictures. I took about 1000 (926 actually) and narrowed it down to about 150 keepers. I'll try to narrow it down even more here ;)

Dinner, our first night

Followed by a walk on the beach. I didn't realize I was doing
this with the lights.. but now I know how to do it on purpose!

These crabs were everywhere!

On a sunset cruise.

The whales really gave us a show!

Sunrise

Early morning fishing

After this picture, Captain Victor told me that I take too many pictures.
Psht. If he only knew.

Blake caught a Yellow Fin Tuna! Mmm!

Relaxing on our balcony

Blake could watch the waves crash all day :)

Whitney gave us a scare and got sucked out into the waves.
She ate some sand and saltwater before making it out okay.

Oops.. here comes a wave!

All safe and sound back on the dry sand.

Goodnight!

Pendleton on A Sunny Evening

Sometimes the light is just so perfect. Everything is lit up with this soft, bright light that makes every blade of grass, building, hillside and horizon look better and magical.  Usually when this happens it seems like I am never in the position to stop and take a picture so I'm resigned to just enjoy the moment and the light while it lasts, which is nice too. 

Sometimes, though, I can stop and take a few pictures. This was one of those days. 

This evening of capturing the light, as fun as it was, resulted in the need for my first attempt at serious Photoshop editing. I liked this little shack, but the only angle I could get had a fence in the way. So I erased it. It was a lot of work! Particularly because my computer didn't have a ton of RAM (yet), which makes it think slower than me in the morning. Here are the before and after files. You are looking at: crop, contrast, highlights/shadows and a lot of the healing brush. That's all I've figured out so far in my trial version of Photoshop Elements. 

Before. Raw converted straight to jpeg (so that we can see it).

After

Before. Again, raw converted straight to jpeg.

After

Before. Raw --> jpeg

After

The Way the Cookie Crumbles

In our family we have a cookie conundrum. With chocolate chip cookies, specifically. I grew up in a house with butter-only chocolate chip cookies. Blake grew up in a house with shortening-only chocolate chip cookies. Yes, now you see the conundrum.

Now, in my point of view, there are so many delicious desserts to be had, that the familiar chocolate chip cookie does not rank too high on the list. I like almost any dessert, from the old-fashioned apple pie to the pretentiously rich pot de crème and everything in between. The chocolate chip cookie, for me, is just another dessert among the masses and only has value if it is chewy-soft and butter-fatty delicious.

Blake, however, likes two things. Chocolate chip cookies and ice cream. Sure, he's broadened his palate over the years and will claim some new favorites like dark chocolate soufflé, crème brûlée and the Samoas Girl Scout Cookie (his choice, not mine.. the mouth wants what the mouth wants). However, the chocolate chip cookie will be, and always has been, his first choice. For Blake, the only real chocolate chip cookie is his mom's and every other cookie is just trying to be like it.

I think that we can all agree that while the chocolate chip cookie has some culinary merit, the primary value in a chocolate chip cookie for most people is nostalgia.

This is where the butter vs. shortening plot thickens. If you grew up with your mom making chocolate chip cookies with either form of fat, it is hard to fully enjoy a cookie that contains the other type of fat. There's just something missing, it just isn't like mom's cookies.

So in our house, Blake's cookie desires rule. It's just not that important to me (because really, I just eat the dough), so I make them how he likes them, or as close as I can anyway. There's still some mom magic that I can't recreate, and that's okay.

Yes. I did just talk about desserts and chocolate chip cookies for six paragraphs. That's how deeply the chocolate chip cookie conundrum has impacted our lives.

The real issue is this. Blake likes them how he likes them because it's how he grew up - nothing wrong with that - but I have a health conscience that takes issue with eating things filled with shortening and really want to find a cookie recipe that uses a less processed fat and possibly less sugar... yet still bakes up fluffy, soft and chewy (instead of melting out flat like so many butter-only cookie recipes). Something that I can get my kids hooked on and that will make their future families have their own cookie conundrum.

I THINK I HAVE FOUND THAT RECIPE and I am going to share it with you today, along with a few pictures, of course.

Best-Ever Chocolate Chip Cookies
(Recipe and directions directly from here)

Ingredients:
3/4 c. unsalted butter, softened
3/4 c. brown sugar
1/4 c. granulated sugar
1 egg
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 c. all purpose flour
2 tsp. cornstarch
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 c. bittersweet chocolate chips

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream together butter and sugars until fluffy and light in color. Add egg and vanilla and blend in. *(I did this by hand)

3. Mix in flour, cornstarch, baking soda and salt. Stir in chocolate chunks.

4. Using a standard-sized cookie scoop or tablespoon, drop dough onto a prepared baking sheet. Bake for 8-10 minutes, until barely golden brown around the edges. (The tops will not brown, but do NOT cook longer than ten minutes.)

5. Let cool, on the sheet, on a wire rack for five minutes. Remove from baking sheet and let cool completely. Makes approximately 3 dozen. Try not to eat them all.

And unrelated to cookies.. but just for good measure.. some photo experimentation from my first full evening of daylight on Friday night...

Drum Roll Please...

And now the moment we've all I've been waiting for...

A photo affectionately referred to as IMG_0001

Yes. That's right. The first picture.

I have obsessed over this for quite some time. I've been researching and reading and doing everything I could in order to be prepared for this moment. In the end, my camera arrived on Monday but I had to work until 10:30 pm.. not a prime picture taking hour. So then I had to wait some more until 7:50 in the morning and snap a few pictures before work. Fortunately, my dear husband suggested buying some flowers this weekend so that I would have something to photograph when the long awaited camera arrived.

ISO 160   f/1.4   SS 1/640  WB: Auto

I'll admit, the white balance and ISO were on auto but it was in manual mode. My goal is to keep it in manual as long as possible. Kind of like constraint induced therapy ;). After this shot I realized that the white balance wasn't what I wanted and I changed it.

Here is picture two, a little warmer:

ISO 125  f/1.4  SS 1/640  WB: Cloudy

After that I went for a self portrait:

ISO 500  f/1.4  SS 1/640  WB: Cloudy

And to spare you the sixty or so pictures of the flowers I took when I got home from work (after dark).. here is just one. I don't love it.. but I didn't love any of the fifty-nine before it either.. the lighting in our dining room, or whole entire apartment for that matter, is not great. Especially at night. I just can't get the white balance right, but I do enjoy the Kelvin option.

ISO 2500  f/1.4  SS 1/1000  WB: 2600K

Well, there you have it. My first day of experimentation. We'll see what photo opportunities the future holds!

Lessons in Love

Love is a complex thing. So complex that in the original languages (Greek, Hebrew, Latin etc) they have multiple words to describe what we describe with one word in English: love.

I've been learning about love lately, in a way that is hard to explain but I'm going to try for the sake of remembering the lessons later.

To preface, I just have to say that I've been loved my whole life. I grew up in a house where my parents and family loved me and told me so daily. I grew up going to church and learning about God's love. I have had dear friends that I love and who have loved me back. I have been covered by and surrounded by love all of my life.

One day I realized that I loved Blake, but even more amazing... I realized that he loved me. I mean, he really loved me. The longer we are married the more it sinks in, he really loves me. I can't explain why this was such a revelation but it certainly was. I have never felt as loved as I do now in my marriage.

As I analyze (because this is what I do) how Blake makes me feel, and how I act in relation to how I feel and how all of these experiences reshape my understanding of love; I not only know in my head that Blake loves me, but I know it deep in my heart, I experience it.

At some point it occurred to me that as much as I know that God loves me, I know that I love Him, I fear, respect, and am deeply grateful to Him, I also don't feel as loved by God as I do by Blake. I know I'm loved by God, in my head, I know that I love Him and I know how much I don't deserve His love. But as I started to wrap my head around how deeply I love Blake and how deeply I feel loved by Blake, it made me start to wonder why I didn't feel this deep sense of love in relation to God.

Like I said, I have been loved my whole life, and I have loved God as best I could.. but once I realized that love could be deeper and more intimate than the love I'd known by my parents and friends... I wanted to extend that feeling to my Creator. I can't really explain this, except to think that maybe Blake is the first person that has the choice to love me. I know my parents don't have to love me, but it seems like it isn't as much of a choice for them as it is for Blake. Maybe this is something I'll understand when I have kids, but at any rate this isn't to say anything negative about the love from my parents.

As I understand how I think about and experience love differently, I start to understand that the verses in the Bible about God's love for us describe an even greater love than the love I feel from Blake. The tangible love that I feel in marriage helps me understand a little better the depth of God's love for us.

This all seems a little backwards to me... shouldn't I feel the love of God the strongest, since His love is the strongest? Shouldn't I compare Blake's love to God's love, and not the other way around? I really don't know. All I can say is that this is how it is unfolding.

And as it unfolds I am learning what it means to truly feel loved by God, and to deeply love him back in a different way. When I say that I love Jesus, something in me understands it differently. It is tangible, intimate, logical and emotional. I think it used to be a little less intimate and emotional, and a little more logical.

Isn't growing great!? I've heard it said, "if you aren't growing - you're dying." Another saying goes, "if you don't use it, you lose it." This is true in all aspects of life. Sometimes it's painful to grow, but what's the alternative? Life is about moving forward, dying to my selfish self, being a little more like Christ today than I was yesterday and growing a little deeper in the grace and understanding of Jesus (2 Peter 3:18).