Well it did.

And it was awesome.

The kids didn’t fight. The adults had a blast together. The weekend was a success.

Now that we’re all back home, we sit, and we wait as we’ve become accustomed to. Patiently waiting for our futures to start, for moving vans, for helping each other unpack and get settled into our lives, for 5 bedroom houses.

One day pictures like that won’t be an event, but instead an ordinary Saturday.

It’s going to happen. She deserves it. So do our amazing men. So do our awesome kids.

So do I.

Go to Atlanta for the weekend, which is 3 hours ahead of your normal time zone and then fly back on the day the clocks change and you lose an hour.

Trust me.

I woke up this morning not only an hour early, but completely disoriented and nervous that somehow I was late for work.

It sucked and I’m totally feeling it now.

Add to that 10 hour work days all week and I’m an unhappy, uninspired camper right now.

Since I was behind a camera all weekend working, I didn’t get many of my own shots but these about sum it up:

Really awesome desserts

Empty Shot Glasses

Beautiful Weather (on the day we left)(AND you can’t tell but it’s fucking FREEZING)

And knowing we were both equally exhausted.

Thank you Megan, for asking me to come help you photograph such an amazing and meaningful event. I had a great time. xoxoxo

Travel. I want to see the world. I’ll settle for the USA to begin with but I want the opportunity. I want to go places I’ve never been, eat food I’ve never eaten and just live it all.

I traveled a lot with my parents when I was younger. I’m the only child and we have an RV so it wasn’t that hard for us to take off in the summer months. Florida, the east coast up to DC, up the west coast, we’ve been around. When we weren’t traveling in the RV, we were camping locally. Fishing, riding bikes, camp fires, sleeping under the stars; that was life.

And I miss it.

I want to share that with my son, I want him to fall in love with the road, with nature, with the idea that going outside and loving the fresh air is the most natural thing in the whole wide world. I want him to go to bed with sticky fingers because we were making smores in the dark and wake up with dirt in his sheets and the bottom of his feet black, only to get clean again because he’s spending so much time in the water the next day.

That’s how I grew up and I want to share that with him.

When I first read this, I thought it was something I had forgiven someone for already. I thought that was easy.

Then I read it again.

It’s meant to be something I haven’t forgiven someone for.

Like I said before, I’m not likely to hold on to a grudge. They are pointless. You’re just hurting someone for hurting you and while you feel they might deserve it, what good is it really doing you? None. No good at all.

But sometimes, sometimes things happen that shake you to your core and shock you, especially when they come out of left field. I’m not used to that happening to me.

It recently did and I’m still trying to process it. I’m still trying to decide what side I am on, what path I want to take. I know deep down that I’ll stick to the bright side but that light isn’t bright enough yet for me to find that place where I can let things go. Things that were said, actions that were taken.

It truly hurts when you give so many parts of yourself to another person and in a moment of weakness and rage and sickness, they denounce all of that.

It’s easy to say “it’s ok, it’s not your fault, you’re not well” and on to the next excuse. But then I feel like in part, I’m cheating myself out of something I feel like I’m owed. I don’t even know what that is at this point. I just know enabling the excuse of blaming an illness will not do me or that other person any good at all.

I can move on and forgive but it all takes time and attempts, reaching out, more than I even know what I actually want.

How very unrealistic of me.

Forgiveness is a tricky thing. I had to think long and hard about this one because I didn’t feel right off the bat that I’ve ever needed to forgive myself for anything. But then I realized that any guilt I’ve ever had to let go of is basically me forgiving myself for something.

I’ve taught myself over the years to let things go. I used to hold on to things, grudges, anger, pain. It took a long time but I have finally learned on some levels to let things go. It’s not a switch I can flip, but over time I can move on and let go.

One of my biggest motto’s in life is to NOT DWELL.

It doesn’t do anyone any good.

I had to forgive myself for breaking up my family. While there were a lot of things that happened that caused that family to fall apart, ultimately it was my choice to walk away. Don’t misunderstand, I don’t regret any bit of that decision. It was the best thing I could have done for myself and for my son. However, it still meant that I had, in some way, contributed to fucking up my son. He has parents that don’t live together. While these days that isn’t strange in any way, it still is. He’s a child of divorce. Mom lives in this house and dad lives in that house. It was never the scenario that I envisioned for him, for me. Then again, neither was being abused at the hand of his father either.

Everything that happens is for a reason. No one can ever convince me otherwise. My life now is what I want it to be and knowing that I’ve chosen it and I’ve made it what it is today makes me incredibly proud.

But I had to flip my life as it was completely upside down to get here and that was one of the biggest things I’ve had to forgive myself for, even if it was the best things I’ve ever done.

This one kind of doubles with the last question so I’ll make this one short and easy.

One thing I love is my ability to sometimes catch a great photo, in my eyes anyways. I’m not big on bragging or shoving my photos in your face a lot but I love photography and I love some of the things I catch. I’m incredibly behind on editing but on a recent trip to Disneyland, I got some of my favorite photos.

I might be the only one to ever love those photos but they are pieces of me, of my life, and I’ll cherish them.

So I think this started as a tumblr meme (what doesn’t these days?) and I’ve seen bloggers pick it up etc etc. I don’t think I’m going to do it every day in a row but we’ll see.

Anyways, here’s day 1 – Something you hate about yourself.

Excellent! Let’s totally start this out on a positive note! *shifty eyes*

However, this one is easy for me right now. If there is one thing I hate about myself at this very moment, it’s my lack of confidence when it comes to work.

I’m a temp right now. I’m not going to go so far as to say I love my job but its tolerable. I don’t hate it. However, I hardly walk in the door every day feeling confident. I’m constantly thinking the other shoe is going to drop and I’m going to be unemployed again. I feel like I walk on pins and needles on a daily basis and for what?

I wish I had a job that I loved. That I was really good at. That I could see myself doing in 10 years and still being happy. I don’t see that end in mind and I really hate that. I feel cheated that I didn’t get to chose a career path, even if it was at my own doing. I love being a mother but now, I’m just stuck in jobs that I work to pay the bills and when you’re at the same place five days a week for more than half of your waking hours, I think that I should be feeling better about it all.

Is getting hired the answer? I really don’t know. It might put my mind at ease. It might boost my confidence. But will it be enough to allow me to live comfortably? Because that is all I really want. I want to not have to calculate missing hours in a pay check because I missed a day of work and have to think of when I can pay this bill or that bill or go buy new clothes for me or my son. Not this paycheck but the next maybe. Juggle, juggle, juggle.

It’s exhausting. And it’s incredibly hard going at it alone. Financially anyways.

(Damn you internet meme. This isn’t going to be easy at all is it?)

DUDES. Sorry about that “authentication required” twitter pop up thingy. It’s making me absolutely insane and I have no idea how to get rid of it. I guess it’s a known twitter issue with this plug in or SOMETHING. Either way, I hate it and you can just hit cancel and it shouldn’t pop up again until you come back. If anyone knows how to get rid of it, please let me know.

Sunday meant swimming and seeing family visiting from Iowa. Which then equals no energy for posting.

Hope everyone had a good weekend!