Photo Friday #32 & #33 September 4, 2009

We just got back from an awesome trip to Ireland, Germany and The Netherlands. One of the best pieces of advice we got before we got married was to make lots of good memories in the first few years (and before kids) so that when you have difficult times you can always look back on those memories and remember good times.
So we’ve taken that to heart and have really tried to be intentional about doing fun dates, weekend trips, leading a missions trip together, and now this, a real vacation!!
We decided on Ireland because both of us had always wanted to go there! We knew we would be going to The Netherlands (to discover my roots, haha) to visit my great aunt and uncle so since we had to fly to mainland Europe anyway we figured we’d sqeeze one more spot in…so we flew to Berlin for a few days before going to visit the fam.

 

I’ll post some more pics with some stories soon (plus i posted a bunch on facebook), but for now, here are a few teasers:

The cliffs of Moher (pronounced Moore) – we were literally on the edge, if you look closely, you can see the tiny people in the distance to give you some perspective on how big these things are! It was kind of scary walking along here, but exhilerating all the same!

Our favorite place in Ireland was this city called Doolin (also where the cliffs are), we watched this glorious sunset the night we were there and just wondered at God’s creation

Anyway, stay tuned…more to come!

Photo Friday #31 August 14, 2009

I was just looking through some old pics and realized that I’m horrible at posting pictures in a timely manner. We took this technically before our house was finalized but I’m sure glad we did because “they” (whoever they are) took it down fast! It’s funny to look at this pic again because I’m wearing long sleeves and a scarf…it obviously was before June when it got HOT!

 

Anyway, here’s to home ‘ownership’!

Photo Friday #29 & #30 August 7, 2009

Baby time! A couple months ago, we were going to have dinner with our friends the Rose family. A couple hours before dinner we all decided that it would be great to have an impromptu infant session with their newborn. She is such a cutie. So to make up for being a week late with photo Friday, here are 3 of my favorites from the shoot. I’ll post more on my flickr when I get a chance…actually I haven’t been good about posting any of our photography stuff on here. We’re working on a new blog actually so when we get that up and running we’ll probably put more of the photo stuff on there.

 

So here’s a family photo with everyone (she wasn’t too happy about this one):

Here she is when she had woken up for a bit, such a pretty little girl:

And the token baby’s feet in daddy’s hands… the toes are so little!!

Well, enjoy and if you’re looking for baby photography or families, portraits, etc…, we’re doing that now along with our video business so send people our way!

WOW… July 28, 2009

A while back, a friend of ours in our bible study had us pray for some friends of theirs who had lost their baby about a week before he was due. She had already had 3 miscarriages and then lost this fully grown baby right before he was going to be born. Well, I stumbled across their blog the other day and read just about every post and just sat there teary eyed and amazed at how God is keeping them strong throughout this whole process. Here I am posting a post from their blog from right after it happened. I ask myself, could I write something like this after such a tragedy? Do I really see my life as belonging to God and not myself? Could I be this strong? Praise God for this family and their encouragement to others who are going through far less!! Here’s their blog site if you’re interested in more (you’ll have to go back a bit to read about their loss because most of the recent posts are about the adoption process they are now currently going through):  http://www.cjbergmenmusic.com/wordpress/

March 17th,                            

 To our dear friends and family.  There simply are no words to express the deep sorrow in our hearts.  Today our little boy, Titus, lost his heartbeat somewhere between this morning and this afternoon and went to be with Jesus.  This comes as such a shock to us all.  We have shared tears and prayers and joy from the very second he was discovered in Renee’s tummy.  We cannot express enough how grateful we are to have had the chance to be Titus’ mom and dad for these past 9 months, and truly count that as a blessing, and a deep honor.  We stand on the hope of the cross of Jesus, without His love, grace, and faithfulness, and His sovereignty, we have nothing.  These past weeks as we as a body have been in Philippians, I have thought so much about Paul’s words about sharing in the sufferings of Jesus.  We humbly, and obediently walk forward in this.  Our desire is to allow ourselves to feel the full weight of this tragedy, emotionally, physically and spiritually, and yet choose hope, choose rest, and choose to continue to glorify God with our lives and with our family.  Titus belongs to God.  We belong to God.  It is our deep prayer that this circumstance would leave such an echo of the realness and presence of Jesus in this world.  May He receive all glory, every minute of the way.  I pray for everyone we will come into contact with in this process, that the Holy Spirit would make Himself evident and that their lives will be saved for eternity in Christ, that is our only end in this life.

We want you to grieve with us and share our burdens, but be affirmed, Titus needs no grief for himself, he is in a better place, we hold tightly to that. The more despair you have on our behalf, even if well intended, will only make it harder for us.  We have the people we need to walk us through this. We appreciate your words and thoughts, but what we need is your prayers and your silence.  Thank you for honoring that, it is a difficult thing for me to write. 

Allow us room and space, and trust us to communicate our needs and wants as they come. As you can imagine, we are spinning.  Renee goes in tonight for a C-section, we don’t have any details as to what went wrong, and we may not.  We will communicate those to the church leadership as soon as we know.

I do not know what else to say.  We love you.  We know we are loved by you.  Thank you for being our family.  May His kingdom come and His will be done.

Feel free to pass this email along if you feel led to.  The more people that know, the better, and the less we have to explain the situation.

C.J. and Renee’

“We’ll forever have stories to tell”

Photo Friday #28 July 24, 2009

The gentleman and I did the Bridal Bazaar last Sunday. It was super fun meeting new people and just seeing so many happy couples. I’m so sorry that the Photo Friday is so “business related” today but so it is….

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Photo Friday #27 July 18, 2009

I have a very special photo Friday for you today The gentleman and I have been working on our house which has included making decisions about art and decorating. While that is fun, sometimes it can be frustrating with how expensive some art is. We saw a piece we liked a while back and really wanted it but really didn’t want to spend that kind of money on it. My mom mentioned that she knew this awesome senior (he just graduated in June) at her school who is super talented. We asked him if he’d be interested in doing a piece for our house and he was all over it! This guy is talented!! He has really blessed us with a beautiful piece of art for our house Believe it or not, this is the first actual painting he’s done! He also used some sticks to paint some of it which I think is really cool. I really wish him the best in college and in his life.

Thanks Abraham for this wonderful art you’ve created for us!

Photo Friday #24, 25 & 26 – i’m a bit behind July 10, 2009

So almost a month later, here are 3 weeks worth of photo Friday so I’m doubling the pics hah. We’ve been working on house stuff and wedding videos so I think we have a good excuse…plus there are only about 3 people who actually read this blog so I’m not too worried

First off, the Del Mar Fair – our yearly free wine tasting fun!

The gentleman making fun of the ginormous crap you can win

Next up, Bottle Peak…the highest point in Escondido where you can see all of Escondido. Here we are with the newly engaged Tony and Fei!!

A word of advice…don’t go when it’s boiling hot like we did and don’t go when there is poison oak EVERYWHERE! I don’t know how but none of us got it!

Last, our country’s Independence Day. We took it easy and chilled with the Paulsons and some awesome carne asada and a not so awesome dessert (a new recipe I tried that looked delicious but didn’t taste quite right, I’m still not sure what happened! So no photo/recipe of that!)

Then we headed over to Grape Day Park (I’ve always gone to the SM show) and Ryan picked us a wonderful spot! The entire show was behind those trees. HAHA lovely!

Photo Friday #23 & #24 June 19, 2009

First of all, it still feels like the beginning of 2009 but as I type week 23/24 of Photo Friday I realize we’re halfway through!! How did that happen?

So in April I was in two weddings, my cousin’s (a couple posts back) and then my good friend/long time friend Tiffany. I’ve known Tiffany since elementary school, we were in girl scouts together and on the swim and flag teams together in high school. It’s so fun to know someone for so long!

Apparently I’m blogging backward?

And for the 2nd ‘pic’ for Photo Friday I totally forgot to mention on of my mom’s gifts for her bday. The gentleman took some pics of my brothers and I for her and framed them. It was kinda difficult to get all 3 of us motivated at the same time to do this but we got some good ones I think

here’s my favorite…when we were just randomly laughing at something…sometimes the most random pictures are the best

Lately… June 15, 2009

Lately -

we’ve been tempted to work on our house
we’ve been too busy with editing to be able to work on our house
we’ve noticed we have a bird that likes to slam into one of the office windows (he really wants to come in i think)
we’ve had a flood in the bathroom
we’ve found a huge beetle (about 2 1/2 inches long!)
we’ve seen lots of bunnies running around our backyard
we’ve bought plane tickets
we’ve been to a funeral
we’ve been to a wedding
we’ve held a newborn
we’ve watched some good movies
we’ve watched some crappy movies
we’ve been to the fair
we’ve felt blessed

needless to say…lately we’ve been busy! i think the saying is true “when it rains it pours” because everything has seemed to hit all at once… but we should be catching up over the summer and by fall our lives will be much calmer (i hope!)

a common equation June 11, 2009

I can’t forget about the best part of any party that my brother’s at!

Tyler + Karaoke + booze = The Devil Went Down to Georgia

…every time

And please excuse the horrible video quality!! This is video from my still camera and I’m just holding it and laughing..oh and I had had a couple drinks

Enjoy!