Today I photographed a house that will be featured in the Midlothian Now magazine in the fall of 2012. The featured fall home is shot a year ahead of publication because we want to showcase them when they are fully decorated, but other than Autumn and Christmas houses, we work about two months in advance. Like back in August when I wrote a post called “the photos I’ve been taking” and I mentioned that I had been doing a lot of fun shoots, but couldn’t share them until October. Well, here is a little peek at what I was working on at the time.

I had fun linking up with “what I wore” for my 10 year reunion so I thought I would do it again for the 50th anniversary party that I have been writing about this week.

A couple months ago I found a dress at a thrift store, but I couldn’t try it on. I reluctantly bought and it did fit, even if it meant having to hold my breath to get it zipped up. So now I had this dress, but I had no idea where I was going to wear it.

When I found out my in laws anniversary would be a brown, western, yellow rose of Texas type theme, I thought the dress would be perfect.

The color and style matched what my husband was wearing too.

So now I knew where to wear it and just had to figure out what to wear it with…

First came the orange shoes, which I ended up not wearing because all the ladies were doing pedicures before hand and I wanted to go open toed, but next time I’ll pick these thrift store heels.

I gambled on a used strapless dress that I couldn’t try on and 4 accessories later I think it worked.

I spent a lot of time working on the slide show for Don & LaDon’s 50th anniversary (yes those are their real names). I had tons of material to work with and was hoping to squeeze over 70 years of history into 10 minutes.

The story begins with The wedding photos of their parents. As the song “You’re Just To Good To Be True” plays you see a sequence of black and white photos of J’s parents up until they met and got married at ages 17 and 20. The next song “50 Years From Now” lyrically fits perfectly with this time in their life when they go through raising 4 daughters and the loss of their 6 week old baby boy.

From there we transition into “Love Like Crazy”. I am not a big country fan, but this song has such a good message to it. During this part of the presentation we have the arrival of J and his brother who were born 8 years after their youngest sister. One of my favorite pictures is of LaDon with her daughter with their sons that were born 7 weeks apart.

Then we hear “God Gave Me You” and start to get a closer to current day with pictures of the grandkids and the siblings and spouses raising kids through the years.

My favorite part of the slide show comes when we hear “You’re Just To Good To Be True” again and we are back to the old black and white photos of the family on tractors, but then the song switches to the hip hop version and we see the next generation of kids on tractors in color. The legacy theme continues with past and present photos of the family who played football and lastly instruments.

The video closes with “Love Story” and shows a brief montage of portraits of the happy couple throughout the years. I threw this in because “Love Story” is my mother in laws ring tone and I really wanted to end with a recap of 50 years that focused on the two of them.

So that’s probably too thorough of a description, but I just wanted to share their story and also what my thinking was with the flow of this project. This was one of the longest slide shows I’ve ever put together, but I enjoyed doing it. It was like getting a front row seat to the past 50 years of their marriage and makes me really curious about the next 40 years of mine!

This is a really great week for a blog break for me because I am up to my eyeballs in video/slideshow editing for my in laws 50th wedding anniversary! I will definitely be checking in with details about all of that next week, but I thought I should at least drop a line in regards to national headlines that SPARKED on Monday.

I recieved calls from relatives across the country checking in to make sure that we were safe. Safe from what? was my initial reaction until I went outside to see the huge cloud of smoke in the air. The news broke around 11:00 am. There had been a massive explosion at a chemical plant that is just over one mile away from our house!

As I went to get groceries that afternoon I got a slightly better view and I just stared in shock saying “I have NEVER seen anything like this in my entire life.”

Z responded that he had never seen anything like that in his whole life either. He was a little scared that the scary smoke alien was following us, but fortunately this was not the case. In fact other than being able to see it, and watching buses bring evacuated children out of nearby schools I was completely unaffected by the event. I texted a friend of mine whose husband works for Magna Blend which is where the fire occured and not only is he okay, but everyone that was in the building even when it happened made it out uninjuried. So praise the Lord for that. I drive by this place almost every single day when I get on the highway and even 3 days later the smell is overwhelming! It’s almost like a combination of an overdone Turkey, 4th of July fireworks, and a science expirement gone bad. When we drove by after church last night there were still many rescue workers on the scene and you could see the smoldering orange glow.

The reports are saying that our post chemical explosion air quality in Waxahachie is completely safe and so I personally have not held off on the breathing at this point. Obviously I’m grateful that everyone is safe. Now I just have to get through photographing two big events this weekend, and that could be explosive on another level.

I have had so many emotions about my ten year reunion you would have thought I was a still an adolescent teenager. I went from planning what I would wear a year in advance, to announcing that I would not be going at all. In the end I did go, and I am glad. While Facebook certainly does dilute some of the excitement of finding out what has become of everyone since High school, social networking is still a very limited media when it comes to reconnecting.

The girls I hung out with in High School were all in the top 10% of our class of 300+, were far more involved in extra curricular activities than I was, and had success written all over them. Some of these girls I have kept in touch with through the years, while others I saw for the first time since High School.

I should mention that there were guys there too, but who cares. Well, I used to, but lets not talk about those memories.

These four gorgeous gals that I’m with were some of my best friends back in the day.

Can you tell who is who from this picture of the 5 of us 12 years ago?

We were all about 15 years old in this photo. The girl on the far left is a graphic designer for Fossil now. I LOVE hearing her stories! Next to her is a girl whose heart is bigger than anyone I know. She spent 3 years doing missions and teaching in Slovokia, and is currently back in the States teaching minors at the juvenile detention center. Her stories are wild. Right next to heris my jet setting friend who is a commercial real estate asset manager. She has tried to explain to me what she does, but I don’t totally get it, even after a google search. Next to her, in the blue tank top, is my friend who heads up a women’s ministry for a large church in Dallas, and on the far right that’s me, the brunette of the group and it may be hard to believe, but I am the only mom.

So, we are all doing our own thing living completely different lives, yet we all still genuinely care about each other and get along as though no time has gone by at all. Obviously I am proud of my friends and their endeavors. And as the only nerd at the reunion toting around pictures of my family in my wallet to show off to anyone willing to try to see in the dark, I think it is safe to say I am proud of what I have done with my life as well. Here’s to the class of 2001.

Last Saturday was the much anticipated Midlothian High School class of 2001 ten year reunion. The truth is, what you wear to your class reunion is one of the most important wardrobe decision you will ever make, other than your wedding day and maybe a walk down the red carpet. I had a couple different dresses I thought could work, but when they announced that the venue for the reunion had been changed, they also announced that it would be “casual” attire. I wasn’t exactly sure if they meant casual like your favorite team jersey and a pair jeans, or casual as in NOT a floor length evening gown. I made a few emergency phone calls the day of the reunion and got the impression that casual cocktail dress was the way to go. This was my first chance to wear this little number that I picked up at the Gap clearance center in Kentucky.

Thank you hubby for taking pictures of the back of my dress so that people could see the adorable buttons.

At the beginning of this week I talked about the Sponge Bob controversy and how studies show it can have negative affects on children due to it’s hyper active story lines and some argue that the fast paced speed of the show is actually helping children learn to process things faster.

In the clip, which you can watch on Fox news, we hear Phil Vischer talk about how research shows that the part of our brain that processes facts and data can in fact be trained to go faster, BUT the part of our brain that processes emotion and makes emotional connection can’t be trained to go faster. They can collect data faster, but they can’t have a feeling about it. If you are trying to help someone feel compassion for example, you are going to have to slow down. Even the article that I dogged on in my post yesterday, quotes child psychologist Douglas Gentile saying “Multitasking is not really good for anyone. Your reflexes speed up, you’re quicker to look over your shoulder and notice little noises or lights. This is not what they [children or teens] need when they get to the classroom and you’re supposed to ignore the kid next to you. Scanning to see when the next message comes, this may not be good for kids. The more distractions you have, the worse your performance is.” A few weeks ago I mentioned that I read “The Help”. I found myself enjoying the book, but having a difficult time settling down to read. I felt like I’d be better off with an audio book so that I could fold clothes, or be productive. I think this was a lesson for me that I need to just to relax every once in a while, and stop trying to accomplish 10 things at a time!

In our instant, high tech society we are blessed to have so many advancements to help us do everything quicker or without much effort. My challenge though, is to try doing things the slower way every once in a while and resist the temptation to multitask while doing it. It took 2 ½ hours to watch “The Help” at the theater, but for me there was so much more depth by reading the book which took about 10 times the amount of time. Similarly I can get delicious lemonade from the drive thru at Chic Fila, but sometimes J and I like to make it from fresh squeezed lemons. It means I get to use this gorgeous juicer that my sister in law made just for me. I also love the opportunity to get to use this cute little bag that my mom quickly sewed together from scraps of fabric that I had on hand. She made it for me when I expressed the desire to have something to keep my clothes pins on me while I hang clothes on the line. Most of the time I throw the clothes in the dryer, and believe me I am thankful for a working washer and dryer, but every once in a while I like to get outside and allow our linens a chance to get fresh air and sunlight.The smell of line dried clothing is something I’ve never been able to duplicate from a bottle. I don’t do these things all the time and I know they are not the most efficient, but they are just little ways for me to slow down, decompress, and find some space from the constant barrage of messages flying at me the rest of the day. For you maybe it’s something else like writing a hand written letter or journal, walking somewhere, or baking from scratch. Throughout this series I hope I have stressed enough that I think all of this change and progress with virtual connection is a good thing. I think that there is a such thing as too much screen time, but what that means might be different for each person. I can only hope that we don’t get so caught up in the digital world that we miss out on all the adventure, romance, pain, fulfillment, and depth that our multi dimensional lives have to offer. That it’s okay to be by yourself and to laugh out loud without anyone even knowing it.

I know. How much longer can I ramble on about the topic of life in the digital age? I am almost done, really, but here is one last gripe regarding an article that was in the Daily Local News last year. The article is titled “Texting, Facebook, Worse Than TV?” and it examines the difference between this generation of teenagers compared to their parents and whether or not all the screen time is worse or just different than what it used to be. The article claims that not much has changed other than it used to be TV time, and now it’s TV, Texting, and Facebook all at once. The headline intrigued me and as I read on there was a statement that really caught my attention,

Okay, let’s back up a second. Key words; cybulling, obesity, texting while driving, all of which can potentially be FATAL. Attention deficit problems and pornography aren’t exactly light weight issues either! I was appauled at how they had these things listed like they are about as damaging as wearing flip flops! Or mindless reruns of “Gilligan’s Island” and “The Brady Bunch” to be exact.

At the end of the article the bottom line is “Never mind that your kid is spending two hours on Facebook each night. As long as they do their homework without texting in between math problems, it’s probably no better or worse than the hours you spent watching Star Trek.” Really, that is the last sentence, following the words “Bottom line”.

I don’t want to make it sound like I am anti technological or social changes and advancements. Have you seen this picture of my family?