The Many Photoshoots of May

Until May I took remarkably few photos in the year 2013. The first photoshoot of the year didn't happen until Valentine's Day, where I got a couple of photos of Matthew eating spaghetti. I'm not sure why I didn't take any of myself - perhaps I was just feeling icky that day? The next time the camera came out was in April to take a random assortment of shots of un-posed people wandering around eating things on Easter and some very poorly decorated eggs (the sight of which I'll spare you). And that apparently was the whole of everything worth documenting with the camera for the Winter 2013 semester. Maybe it snowed. Maybe it was pretty. Will anyone know? Will they care?

Then all of a sudden in May, the camera came alive. It seemed every weekend was photo-worthy. Things went so far that we even had to (gasp!) CHANGE THE BATTERIES.

So what was the big deal about in May? Well, let's take a look back and see...

1. I decided to get my hair cut. So the weekend before, I got my sister Hannah to take a lot of photos of me and Matthew (she took some of the photos we used for our engagements, and we liked them so much we asked her to give us coupons for more photoshoots for Christmas). This led to some great and goofy moments - I'll let you figure out which is which:

I totally can see this as a movie poster for a chick flick. Titles, anyone?

A rare non-goofy one of us three!

I believe the instructions were "look flirty..."

This photo is destined for great things.

2. I actually GOT my hair cut. Photos briefly became an obsession.




3. Matthew, possibly influenced by that one time in my western film class when I took him to see "Unforgiven," went and bought a gun (in unrelated news, the dog who barks all the time upstairs mysteriously went missing that night...). Of COURSE we took photos.

Matt and *Shotgun Shane*

He also went shooting for the first time on Memorial Day with a few friends from work, but in a great tragedy, the camera was left behind, so we must imagine it looked something like this:

Matthew is obviously the cute Asian.

4. Mother's day! Self-explanatory.

5. Mama's birthday! You will note that once again we succeeded in making our mother cry.

Blueberry birthday pie!

Okay, so Daniel was actually the one who made her cry...

Dad reading my very witty Jane Austen card

6. We celebrated our two-year anniversary at the end of May. For some reason (oh yeah I'm taking a class this semester) I didn't have as much time as I had last year to prepare decorations and ideas, so we ended up having a very toned down celebration. I took a long walk in the rain (a romantic touch which I greatly appreciated seeing as how it rained on the evening of the day we got married) by myself waiting for Matthew to get off work, and we celebrated with cheesecake (which we had on our honeymoon) and strawberry lemonade (which we had at our reception). And pictures, of course.

The following things also happened in late April/early May that were camera-worthy:

7. We visited a friend of mine from the first neighborhood we lived in when we moved to Utah. I used to babysit her three oldest kids and it was fun seeing how grown-up everyone was except for herself and her husband, who haven't looked older than 25 since I met them. I actually thought she was a Laurel (a 16-18-year-old girl in the Church's Young Women program) when I met her and was surprised to find out she was a leader. Now I'm pretty convinced she could pass for one of my college students. I hope we'll visit them again so I can figure out where she stashes the Fountain of Youth flask.




8. I got a bad ingrown toenail. I actually got it in March, but it got worse and worse until I finally decided to get it taken care of after finals. I went to the BYU Student Health Center and had a very pleasant experience. Someone asked me if I was there to see the podiatrist before I had time to even sit down, the podiatrist and assistant had everything ready when I walked into the "operating" room, the assistant handed me the piece of paper to sign away my rights while the doctor was actually already prepping my toe, and everything was smooth and quick and relatively painless (most of the pain came later when the toe "un-numbed"). Overall I was in and out in about five minutes, and I haven't had a problem since. The lack of pain has done wonders for my exercise - turns out running, walking, and moving are way more fun when your toenail isn't jabbing you with every step!

Apologies for the grossness of the next photo. If you have small children.... actually, small children will probably find this pic pretty cool:

First look after taking off the bandages

9. I got back into shape. Winter is always the worst semester for me health-wise (especially with food poisoning!), but so far I've always been able to bounce back in the spring. Photo-wise, I ended up experimenting with yoga pics I've seen online or just stretching in general:

What you don't see is my toe, pre-operation, throbbing in agony