Secret Passion

As some of you know, I am an art major with an emphasis in photograpy. I would consider myself an average photographer, nothing amazing.  But I do love to look at other people's photographs and at works of art in general.  In fact, I would love to work in an art museum.  Well, one day I was looking at one of my art books and found a picture that I loved.  The composition was beautiful and the contrast of values impeccable, but that wasn't what truly caught my eye.  This is the picture I saw.  The photographer is one of my favorites, Rodney Smith.

What really caught my eye was the grace and beauty that these two women held themselves with.  I've always loved ballet dancers and how beautiful they are.  They wear beautiful dresses, they are slim and graceful, strong and felxible.  I love photo's of ballerina's and here are a few that I really love. 

Photo by Rodney Smith.

And another photo by Rodney Smith...

This is not Rodney Smith, but I really loved it.

If you get really bored, I found this video awhile ago and still love it.  This is from a ballet called La Bayadere.  I'll give a very short background up to this point in the ballet.  The main character Nikiya is a dancer.  She falls in love with a warrior by the name of Solor and the High Brahmin (basically a high priest) is in love with Nikiya.  The High Brahmin finds out about the relationship between Nikiya and Solor.  Solor is selected to be the Rajah's daughter's fiance' and the jealous High Brahmin tries to get Solor killed by telling the Rajah about the relationship.  However, this backfires and the Rajah declares that Nikiya is the one to die.  Nikiya agreed to dance at a feast, not knowing that it is Solor's and the Rajah's daughters engagement feast.  At the feast, Nikiya (dressed in orange) begins with a somber dance, very mournful.  After a little while, she is given a basket of flowers that she believes to be from Solor (green outfit) and begins a very joyous dance.  However, the flowers are not from Solor, they are from the Rajah (fancy crown thing-blue outfit) and his daughter (purple dress) and in the basket is a poisonous snake that bites Nikiya.  The High Brahmin (orange outfit-big headdress) offers Nikiya an antidote, but Nikiya refuses it because she cannot be with her true love.  This dance is called Morte de Nikiya and the dancer playing Nikiya is Isabelle Guerin.  I'm sorry if that was a confusing summary!  The clip is about 7 minutes long so you don't have to watch all of it or even any of it.  I just like this clip.

Weekend Adventures

Well, this weekend has been a very busy one!  On Friday, we were going to go camping with Paul and Alyssa, but we didn't really have enough time to, so we decided to go hiking and have a campfire instead.  We wanted to go to Cress Creek trail, but I kind of got us a little lost so for the first part of our adventure we followed a railroad track and climbed up the side of a hill.  It was actually pretty fun!  Pulling the stickers out of our socks, however, was not.  I knew we were close to the trail and that we still had plenty of daylight left, so I called my mama (my best direction system) and she got us there safely!  This first picture is the rock we sat on and watched the sun set.  It was a beautiful day and the sunset was great to watch!  

This is a picture I took while we were going up the trail.  Yes, part of it was paved, but since we are all out of shape it was ok!

 David and Pauly, best of friends

On Saturday morning, I woke up at about 5:30, trying to catch my breath.  I couldn't get enough air to my lungs because they felt so congested.  I tried drinking some hot chocolate to loosen things up, I tried putting my head over some boiling water to see if I could get the steam to loosen my lungs up, but nothing worked.  I finally decided to wake David up, but I knew he was going to be super tired because we had been up so late the night before.  But, being the wonderful husband that he is, he got right up, put me in the bathroom and had me in a hot shower so that I could breathe in all that steam.  That didn't really work, and since no doctors office was open that early, we headed up to the hospital.  The wait wasn't very long and I had a few little tests and they finally told me that I had bronchitis.  Basically what that is is the inflammation of the main airway to your lungs.  They gave me some antibiotics (in the hope that it was a bacterial infection) and some cough medicine. 

We went home and slept for a little bit longer.  David had to go to work so I stayed at home.  He took a break at 2 and came and got me and dropped me off at my mom's house.  He got me all situated and went right back to work.  I think he was afriad if I was home alone that I would stop breathing and die, so he was being so good to make sure I was ok!  So all Saturday he was at work and I was at my parents house.  I mostly sat on the couch with their dog watching Dr. Phil.  It was a long day because I was sick and I didn't get to see David hardly at all.  Normally we spend most of the day together so that was really hard.  I was so glad to see him that night!

Today was a pretty good day, we slept in, went to church, had dinner at my parents house, then came home and relaxed all night!  We had a nice little suprise when we looked out the window.  It was a good end to the weekend, being able to see another beautiful sunset!



Fulfilling a Request

I had a request from one of David's sisters to update my blog and tell how life in our home is going, so here it is!

Life has been pretty dang busy.  Both of us work about 4-10 hours a day, 6 days a week.  Between the two of us, we work about 90 hours a week.  I know my dad would be proud about that and wouldn't even bat an eye if he had to do it himself, but doing it every day for the last 4 months has been a little hard.  But on the upside, we can pay for school, house supplies, car, and date nights!  But I will be glad when school starts so we can slow down a little bit.

This past week David went to play in a wedding gig in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.  He got to play with one of his favorite teachers ever and had the whole ride down and back to pick his mind.  He was pretty much in hog heaven! 

I took some senior pictures of one of David's cousins but am still working on editing them.  Once I get them done I'll probably put them on my other blog, but I might still include a few on here. 

Not much is due to happen in the next little while until school starts, life will pretty much be the same way it's been for the past few months.  I've picked up a little bit of a chest cold so I hope that clears up soon. I really hate being sick and not feeling good enough to keep up with everyone else.  But things will get better very soon, I'm sure of it! 

Whelp, until next time, have a good day!