Jenifer Lyn Photography » Wife, Mother, and Wedding Photographer Extraordinaire

Well, it has been quite a busy quarter, to say the least! With everything going on, I had to cut back on something, so blogging had to be one of those things. But I think we are back to normal now (whatever THAT is!), so I can go back to doing all the things I love, but had to put on hold.

I am very proud to announce that my husband was nominated and accepted to attend the FBI National Academy (FBINA or fibeena as my daughter calls it).

The FBINA is a 10-week intensive training session put on by the FBI for police administrators.  Wait? Did you say 10 WEEKS?! In Quantico, VA?! Yes I did.  He left in early April and we got to attend his graduation on June 10 – a day I am most proud of him for. And with a newborn and two older children to care for on my own, things were a little on the crazy side. The whole experience for me taught me a LOT about how much I took him for granted and made me learn that while I have the utmost respect for military families, I could NEVER do it. I’d go insane. 10 weeks was more than I wanted to handle. HUGE Congratulations to my husband!!!! Here he is receiving his certificate from Robert Mueller, Director of the FBI.

Clearly I was sitting in the wrong location of the auditorium to get a great photograph, however, Little Sammy ensured I had to stay close to an exit to try and keep his yelling from interrupting the ceremony. And interestingly, he’s also the reason I became suspect #1 of the Secret Service agent assigned to the Director. I was doing the nice thing and taking him out of the room so all the other families could enjoy the ceremony, which immediately drew his attention to us. Apparently he finally deemed me an unlikely assassin, as by the fifth time I had to bring Sammy out of the room he began laughing at my situation.

Speaking of little Sammy, here he is with his great big brother who insisted on this new haircut just days after breaking his glasses. He looks like a totally different (and older) kid!

During this time, since my parents were coming to visit, I had the great idea of offering to plan my sister a baby shower. Heck, I only get one chance to throw my ONLY sister a baby shower! Since she lives in AZ, I couldn’t make it a surprise, but she was more than willing to fly out for such an occasion. I will spare you the planning details and just skip to showing you the crown jewel of the shower – her cake. You see, my sister LOVES shoes, and knowing her, she will instill that same love of shoes into her own daughter. So it only seemed fitting to include shoes on her cake.

A HUGE thank you to Marianne from Carriage House Confections. She truly took my idea, ran with it and made an amazingly beautiful cake. And it was the YUMMIEST cake I’ve ever eaten. If you ever need a cake and you are in the Mansfield area, CALL HER!!!!

So now that he’s home, look for more frequent posts from me. In the meantime, have a safe, yet fun Fourth of July!!!

Tucson, AZ has found itself all over the media recently, due to the horrific shooting at the Safeway in which 6 people were killed (including a 9 year old girl) and Representative Gabrielle Giffords was wounded. The whole event saddens me greatly. No matter your political stance, you have to agree that such acts of violence solve nothing.

If you know me, you know I got my passion for photography from my parents – my Dad showed me how to use his Canon AE-1 when I was young and I loved every minute of it. So it was no surprise to find that they pulled together a slideshow compilation of their greatest images from around Tucson, set to “I’d Rather Be In Tucson” performed by Jean Chastain, written by Earl Wettstein.

Please take 2:34 to watch this view of the city in which they live – a city they love; a city that refuses to be defined solely by this unthinkable event. Their photography is amazing and deserves to be seen by so many. And if you like this video, you can view more of their images (and buy them, too!) on their web site: PicturesAt11.com

If you cannot see the video below, please click here to watch it.

We rang in the new year in sunny Orlando, FL, visiting the awesome new Wizarding World of Harry Potter portion of Universal Studios. What a way to start 2011!!!

But first we made a stop off in Savannah, GA – LOVE that city. I want to go back and spend more time there – I could spend hours taking photographs of all the cool architecture there.

Its a new year and with it brings the promise of new things, new resolutions, a clean slate – if you would. What are you going to do with that? Do what you did last year? Only if it worked. If it didn’t – then change. That’s what I’m going to do. Push myself to look at things differently. Change the way I handle relationships, fitness, eating, cleaning, blogging, photographing events, and so much more. I don’t have the expectation that I will be able to become a new person overnight, but just having the plan already makes me feel changed.

So what will you do?

(you could make plans to go to Hogsmeade….)

The season is always the busiest for me between May and October and that is typically when I start to fall behind on blog posts. So it shouldn’t be a huge surprise that I haven’t posted in a while. Try as I may – sometimes blogging ends up as a much lower priority to other thigns – like weddings and albums and such. But this year, while the blog did take a backseat to those items, I actually got behind in blogging for another, more personal reason.

It is with great excitement that I share with you all that my family and I are expecting baby #3!!!!! I’m actually due in a few weeks, which is truly why I’m behind in blogging. It’s been 7 years since our youngest (well, she WAS our youngest) was born, so I forgot how much being pregnant changes life. So far it has been a wild ride and I expect that the last few weeks will be too. But I am SOOOOOOOOO excited to meet our little guy (oh, yah, we’re having another boy!!!!!!!).

Since I can’t possibly post without including an image, here’s a shot from my last ultrasound of our little stubborn boy with his arm in front of his face. I can’t get over the 3D technology and how they are able to create images like this – and I can’t wait to see if this is really what he looks like!

Just a brief note to welcome 2009! I am way behind on blogging. I just can’t seem to catch up. And for months I’ve been beating myself up for it. It’s 2009 and I am now starting fresh. It’s a new year, new expectations. I do hope to get a few of the weddings/engagement sessions blogged from last year, but I’m not going to promise anything to you or myself. As a very wise man once said, “Keep moving forward”, or as the whole quote goes:

“We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”
~ Walt Disney

(Since I don’t have any images of Walt – the man – I am including a quick image of the kids at Disney World, from earlier this year)

With the start of 2009 comes my look back to 2008 and all that I was able to accomplish as a business owner as well as all that we were able to do as a family and I am very proud of all of that. In such tumultuous times it’s very easy to get down (and this cold NE weather doesn’t always help) by focusing on things that aren’t going as well as we would like. But what is more important is that we focus on all the great in our life. And that is where you all come in. Thank you for reading my blog, viewing my work, and more importantly, being a part of my life in some way.

Here’s to a great 2009 for all and I hope you all are able to accomplish for yourselves what you set out to.

I still love to dance, but don’t go out very much now that I’m older. Plus, my husband, as wonderful as he is, does not like to dance (not many husbands do, do they?!), so our going out usually entails dinner at a great restaurant and drinks some place cool, which I totally love. But I’m wandering off topic.

I’ve been wanting a point and shoot camera for a while now. I seem to find myself at different occasions wanting my camera, but not wanting to bring my whole DSLR kit everywhere. For example, we are leaving for Disney in 55 days (or so I’ve been told!) and I really want to be able to get some images of the kids at the parks, but I REALLY don’t want to have all my gear with me.

So I think I finally have the answer! Today we bought a Canon Powershot Digital Elph. This thing is soooooo cute. And at 7.1 megapixels, it’s got some good-sized files. Plus, it fits in my pocket!!!!

We just bought it today, so I haven’t had too much time to play with it, but it seems pretty good. It can actually capture these cute little videos, too. I mean, I can’t compete with MGM or anything, but I can capture videos and share them with family who can’t see the kids everyday.

I took the following image with it set on fully automatic. I take this time to also introduce our new living room set up….we moved the couches and added in a huge white bookcase. I love it!!
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Notice RJ hamming it up for the new camera?!

The auto flash went off – I’m not crazy about that, but I’ll read the manual and figure out how to get a little more control over it.

Now, I’m not sure if this will work, but I’m going to try to post a 12 second video of the kids fooling around for the camera. They are sooo cute!

We have our first little league baseball practice tomorrow (weather permitting), so I think I’ll bring it with me and test it out some more.

Until then, have a great night!

Portsmouth, NH is just a wonderful place! It’s so cute! We arrived at Sheraton Harborside on Friday around 3, checked in, and took a tour of the hotel to get an idea of where everything was going to take place on Saturday.

While in our travels we were fortunate to run into Lee, the Catering Manager for the event. She is wonderful! She took the time to show us around and give us the timeline of the events and show us the different places where everything was taking place. I honestly can’t say enough good things about her – she’s so sweet!!

By this time it was dinner time, so we found our way over to Cafe Mirabelle – a quaint French restaurant. Since it had snowed earlier that day and it was still extremely cold out, the restaurant was very empty. So we were able to get a seat in the upper level window, overlooking Portsmouth. It was wonderful! The food was fantastic and the staff was great. I was so glad Ron took the time to research area restaurants and found this, or we never would have had the chance to try it out. We will definitely go back!

We went back to the hotel and had a couple drinks in the lounge – it was nice. Of course, I had my camera with me and played around with a few things. Here are a couple, starting with Ron on the phone (behind my very tasty martini):

With this next one, I was trying for long exposure out the window to capture the lights and boats in the water outside the hotel. It came out kind of cool….

This image is actually a composite of two images I took. When we went out, I had only brought my 50mm lens and it was not wide enough to get the whole church, even from across the street. Adobe’s CS3 does a great job pulling the images together – it’s really cool!

A couple of days ago I read about Photshop Express from Dane Sander’s blog (he’s GREAT!); then today I read a post about it from Gary Fong, so I decided I needed to check it out.

This site is AMAZING! it allows you to import your images from your computer, or from various sites – including Facebook and Picasa (two I use). THEN you can touch the images up through various very user-friendly tools. Right online! For free!

Adobe has really done something great here. I really like their products and this is yet another great one.

Google Apps

While I’m talking about cool technology, I’ve also spent a bunch of time in Google’s world and they really have created a TON of cool applications. I’ve been using their reader for a while now and I love it. If you check multiple blogs to see when /if they’ve been updated, the reader is a great tool. Just copy and paste the URL into the Add subcriptions box and it will track them for you. It’s so wonderful, I think I’ve added WAY too many!!! But I can easily bypass those I don’t want to read.

Upcoming Wedding!

Ok, I’m done promoting the fun technology I’ve found lately….I’m off to pack for a very exciting wedding in Portsmouth, NH!!! We leave later today and have the wedding tomorrow. I’m sooooooo excited. This couple is great and we are going to have a BLAST! Plus it gives us a chance to check out some other venues up in NH that we also have weddings at this year.