I'm back!

Not that I was ever gone per se... but I'm here at any rate. Sorry for the little absence.
On July 7, my husband and I photographed a wedding for a client and to be honest, we are a little out of shape when it comes to that. This wedding, though wonderful, totally wiped us out and on Friday we were still recovering. We didn't get home until around 2am and for me, it was just not a restful sleep. I ended up taking TWO naps the next day and weighing my options between getting up for essentials like potty breaks and food, and just staying in bed and dealing with my needs another way.
I've read that some photographers (the super high-end ones) create their wedding packages to include a whole day at the spa complete with massage and meals the day after. I dont know, but last time I researched a spa day - it was upwards of $400... hmmm...

(source)

Hopefully someday I'll be so good that I can justify it. For now though, I'm satisfied with just being me and massaging my own feet in a hot bath the day after!

(source - me!)

Today, we're expecting a guest; one of V's friends is coming to stay the weekend with us. So the house is clean, the beds are made, the bathrooms are scrubbed and the kitchen is ready for homemade pizza tonight!

Next week, we're preparing all week to leave for Sweden!

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V and I will be away for a couple weeks together, and I'll be staying a week longer with his parents. As always, it will be educational and being completely immersed in a new language (since they don't speak English) will be good for my conversation skills. For now, I'm only really capable of small sentences and a few words here and there. Funnily enough, V's mom is fluent in French as well as Polish, and whenever we come across a word I'm not sure of in Polish, I can usually ask in French and we understand each other. Sometimes though, V's mom forgets that I am not fluent in either Polish or French, but she's excited to be able to speak to me, so she starts happily babbling away in French... I love it. French is nice for me because I can usually pick out what's being said because most of the time, the sentence structure is similar in English.  I just need to remember the advice my dad gave to our exchange student, Anne, when she came to stay with us. He said, "If you don't understand, it's okay to tell us. Don't just pretend to understand, because you won't learn anything that way."
I have to remember to say, "I don't understand." when I need to, and not just try to get by on gesticulation and such.

In light of our vacation, I'll be cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. I love to come home to a clean house after a long stint away. Once, I cleaned our home from top to bottom in preparation to leave, and we came home to a disaster!! The neighbor kids were watching our cat, and they went into our bedroom and were nosey. We had closed the bedroom to keep the cat out while we were away. Since the kids left the bedroom door open, he got into my yarn and made messes in the bedroom - not to mention other things that were torn apart and missing when we got home.
This time, we live close to our dear friends whom we trust and who will be watching over our home while we're away. Even if they decide to stay in the house the entire time we're away it's nice to know that the house would be clean when we got home. It's so wonderful having people we trust around. I think that's one of the most important things in life - having people to trust.

Woah there. Philosophical, man... lighten up! Here's a photo of our cat...