A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to photograph my friend (but I have always called her my aunt) Lesia’s wedding in Phoenix, Arizona.  It was such a beautiful day!

I started off the trip with a friend Jodi, who I met at WPPI two years ago.  She is a super talented lady, whose studio ( Le Boudoir Studio), I have been hearing about for the past 2 years.  I was lucky enough to get to spend a morning with Jodi at her studio, and it just blew my mind.  It made me want a studio realllllly bad. It is something that I have thinking about a lot lately, but seeing the functionality of her studio heightened that desire. I wish I had some photos of our adventures, but we failed on that one!

I left Jodi and went to spend some time with my family, and photograph Lesia’s wedding, which was awesome.  I booked a few extra days off after the wedding to spend some time travelling and seeing friends, although we really made no plans.  All I knew, was that I was meeting up with one of my best friends Jackie.  Where, when and how were all to be determined at that point in time. My family was driving back to California on Sunday after the wedding, and I hitched a ride with them, knowing I would see Jackie, and still having no plan (but knowing we would work it out).  I met up with Jackie on the side of the highway, and we decided to head to Big Bear to visit our friend Shane who we couchsurfed with 3 years ago!  We have stayed in contact and visited him since, and we had been promising for a while to go visit him in the mountains.  It was also his birthday around that time, so all signs pointed to YES.  We drove up the mountain during an EPIC sunset, and eagerly caught up, talked about life and savoured the amazing landscape while we could still see it.

We of course went for Mexican food, because the rule whenever I go to Cali is to enjoy as much Mexican food as possible, since it is my favourite, and it is soooooo good there!  THEN, we were reunited with Shane.  I have to say, this guy amazes me.  From the day we met him, and up to now, he has this crazy awesome view of life and always inspires me. He even has this poster of “Shanes Life Rules” on his wall, and they always make me smile. I remember this one day the last time we visited him, we stayed up for hours just talking about our lifes goals.  He asked me what is is that I wanted.  I told him, I want to be a nurse, and I want to be a wedding photographer.  Ideally I would like to do them both part time to make one full time job.  I asked him the same.  He told me that he wanted to create a company for graphic design.  He was already in the early stages, and if I wasn’t already in the Showit community and in the process of designing a website, he would have been my go to guy. 3 years later, here I am working part time nursing, and I am a wedding photographer, and he is one of the co-owners of an amazing company Mitten United, doing incredible work for sooo many people and just living the dream up in the mountains.  It was such an incredible feeling to look back at the last few years and all we have accomplished.  I am so so proud of him, and so happy we decided to surf his couch 3 years ago.

This trip, we were all talking about hopes and dreams and all that good stuff, and he told us about his friend who coined the term “Power Move” – when you are on the fence about something, and can’t decide what you want to do, you have to do this.  Well now, we have decided to create a hashtag in all of our life decisions that require the “Power Move”.   We put the term to good use after waking up for a sunrise hike after only 3 hours of sleep.  I was sooo not used to the elevation and thought my lungs were bleeding the whole way up, but once we got there, every single step was beyond worth it.  It was one of those moments you just savour.  You close your eyes and take in the feeling of the air, the warmth of the sun, and the cool rocks.

We had such an awesome time soaking up the California sun, eating really great Mexican (and other) food, eating tooo much salt water taffy and not missing a sunrise or sunset. As she drove me to the airport, I got that sick feeling in my stomach.  It always sucks leaving Jackie, since we never know exactly when we will see eachother again, and also leaving California. I get the feeling every single time I leave this place I have absolutely fallen in love with. We took off from Longbeach, and I was plastered to the window, looking for our hotel on the coast and enjoying the view of mountains and ocean and feeling sad that this trip is over, but happy knowing I can come back soon.  I don’t know why California gets me like this, but it has since the very first time I ever went there, and it gets more intense after each visit.

Until February, when I can reunite with the warm Cali sun 🙂

xox