THE PITTMANS...: My first day..

away from the kids since Eric returned home....

was spent HERE:

An all day photography class instructed by

This is how the story begins...

A very good friend of mine from college, Abby, (she also is the youngest and has 2 older sisters), her oldest sister, Angie, has a friend Joanne...if you click on Joanne you will see her story. She had a stroke last January and if you scroll down my blogs you will see a button "Praying For Joanne"...Joanne's sister would update the blog on Joanne's progress...Her sister is Kristen H....yes, Kristen IS

KH Photography! That is how I found the class!

If you've known me at all the last 10-15 years you know that I love photography. In fact, after I graduated college I was going to move to CA or NYC to pursue that...well, God had other plans(imagine that) and I met, Eric! So, where did I move to after college???? Yes, that's right, Toledo, Ohio! :-) (love ya eric!)

I looked into doing those at home photography classes...yeah, that didn't work. Then, I just put it on the back burner and at times found myself daydreaming about what I would do if I was a photographer...

needless to say, Josh was born and the last 5 years have gone by in a blur...with Eric being gone all of last year it actually FORCED me to look at myself and take inventory on how I was doing...emotionally, physically, spiritually, etc...(when I say 'forced' it's because I had to after my emotional collapse the first week of january last year)...

Well, what do I love?? I LOVE catching those moments of life that completely capture a person, event, situation or whatever through a picture! It challenges me. One of the gifts I feel like God has blessed me with is perceiving...to see things at what they are, genuinely and to see people at exactly where they are in the moment. I suppose psychology and photography are obvious things I would gravitate towards.

On September 17th I was finally able to

1) learn about my awesome camera that Eric gave me one year and it WILL stay on manual(M mode) FOREVER!

2) have a day, where after one of the longest years, was just me..being able to just simply be 'me'! No other hats were worn that day...

3) breathe, reflect, meet other women and hear about THEM and their stories!

4) eat awesome food, thanks Janna, for even making the main dish gluten free...

5) learn something new that I can now use while I'm wearing all my hats(mom, wife, sister, daughter, friend, etc...) and take some great pictures!

So, here are the pictures I took that day...now, please remember that I'm NOT a professional and I was learning how to adjust all the settings...anyways, these first ones are me playing around with my place setting and around her house before we went outside...

Now, this is when we went outside for the shoot...I was going a little nutty by then... :)- the lighting kept changing!! Imagine, outside in CO during the month of September..we had rain, bright sunlight, grey overcast skies...needless to say it was a crash course in how quickly can I change my settings! HA!
By the way, this is Audrey, Joanne's oldest daughter...how awesome is she?? can you tell that I liked her shoes???