Happy Thanksgiving from my family to yours. Thank you for the connection we have. Now, off to cook. I didn't grow up with Thanksgiving, and the preparation, for me, is as wonderful as the feast. We won't have the usual group of family here, it will be our small family, but we will eat well, drink wine, and toast the land we are grateful to live on and our community ❤.

Today is April 10th, is our “WAS-WEDDING” Today we were supposed to be getting married. We should be mid-ceremony right now. But now, we have a different beautiful memory.
We realized early March that our plans were in jeopardy and emotionally adjusted. It was about perspective. We shifted our focus to being thankful that we have each other.

It is a funny thing being a wedding photographer. Wonderfully in love people come into my life, and invite me into their world. I get to witness their nerves, their connection, their hopes and what is in their heart. I feel their excitement and some of their vulnerability.

14 days into it: I made it through dance week, with great joy actually. I happily head off for a jaunt to Victoria and Saltspring Island for photo shoots. The solo time is a brilliant gift. While I am still carrying around a low-level fatigue I feel like I see rainbows and unicorns everywhere. Actually, the light was incredible for my photo sessions and I did see a rainbow. My oven doesn’t work.

It started as a trip to Mexico, then morphed into a Rocky Mountain road tip, and evolved into an easily attainable and meaningful Gabriola Island getaway.

My daughter and I also talked a lot. About Trump. About being Jewish and the Jewish response to Trump. About choice. About fear. About education. About balance. While regulating my dialogue with my teen, I personally can’t turn away from the news and I don’t think I will. It isn’t the right solution for me.

The deadline is only 5 days away. Friday night I sat down and started going through which images to enter in a national wedding photographer’s competition. For this competition, each season you have the chance to compete, racking up points (hopefully) for your annual placement. You can technically enter as many images as you want, as long as you are willing to pay the extra price.

“You Don’t Have to Be Pretty. You don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don’t owe it to your mother. You don’t owe it to your children. You don’t owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked female.”