Welcome back to our Weekly Wednesday blog! The past few weeks & summer in general you may have noticed have been full of Sessions and work photography, but this week we’d like to share with you some more personal exciting events of the past week for us as an immediate family.
A week and a half ago on Aug 21st we celebrated our 6 Year Anniversary (yes, we once had 2 separate Professional Photography websites prior to being together, but have both photographed weddings professionally since early 2010). It was the day before we photographed the latest 11 hour wedding for a couple of ours, so we went to see Twister & Lost Boys at a local drive-in theatre nearby (one that plays 8 movies a night on 4 screens), then did a bit of adventuring on our Friday Anniversary day. That day we went and drove through some back areas of Michigan. We found an ENTIRE section of the most apple, peach, & plum trees (plus blueberry, raspberry, etc plants) we’d ever seen, grabbed some fruits in Eau Claire, and then headed up to hike near a beach in Saugatuck. We’d never been up to hike there by the beach in that city before, so what we thought would be casual woods hikes soon became 7 miles of dunes moguls on scorching hot sand, many blisters, and semi regret. It seemed appropriate for us and was definitely a workout. Luckily just prior we’d brought an Elote Pizza from Pizza Transit (from Niles, MI) up on a dune to start the “casual hike” with a picnic, so we didn’t starve to death on our 3 to 4 hour long death hike. All-in-all we were just stoked that we weren’t sore the next day photographing the 11 hour wedding day in nearly 100 degree humidity.
Amidst all of the other festivities, we still made some time to book our annual anniversary antique process portrait. This year we did a couple of new tintypes with our friend Victor in Michigan. We’ve done one of these types of portraits (either a tintype or a glass plate negative) every year that we’ve been together, so we have 6 years’ worth now from 3 Professional Tintype/ Ambrotype photographers who capture these images via an antique camera with an antique process (wherein the image is captured DIRECTLY onto a piece of metal or glass, subsequently leaving us with that image that is BOTH “the negative” and “the positive”). (In the last image you’ll see a shottily put together collage Jenny made on her phone the day we got the photo taken that shows each of the past 6 years’ worth!)
About a week ago on August 25th our puppy had her 1st Birthday-! When we got her 10 months ago we had guessed she & her siblings’ birth date based on their nearly 8 hour transportation/ rescue from Kentucky to up near us (nearly Chicago here in Indiana) in their FIRST week of life. The rescuers told us that the puppies & their mom were rescued from a cinder block room attached to a womens prison and that they were driven up while their eyes were still in the closed phase. Folks fostered the puppies for the first 2.5 months of life, then they were adopted out via the rescue. The rescue took care of all of their necessary shots prior to adoption and helped us figure out what shots were left in the past 10 months since this is our first puppy-puppy.
For Rizzo’s 1st Birthday we got the doggos treats from Rolling Acres (based in Logansport, but sold at the Mishawaka Farmer’s Market on Sundays), a pet store, and then gave her a dog cake also from Rolling Acres (delivered to our door). She seemed to love her treats and even got to go for a boat ride & swim last week as well!
We almost didn’t realize, but the day after on August 26th last Wednesday (a week ago today) was our other dog’s 4th Adoptaversary (at 6? years old)! We’ve had our other dog Coco since less than a couple weeks after we bought & moved in to our house/ about a year since we moved here from our additional educational Photography degrees out in California! Coco started off a bit hyper, but last summer Jenny taught her Off Leash responsibility, so Coco no longer wants to jump fences to chase squirrels and give us a heart attack! Jason accidentally left a fence opened and while she and Rizzo did explore a bit of the front yard by the road, as soon as Jenny called them they walked right back into our fenced in yard-! Coco has become a zen pup in some ways, but still deeply hates bicycles riding by… which has expanded to motorcycles, jetskis, and anything 1-person operated. All-in-all though she’s generally calmer than puppy Rizzo.
2 other Birthdays of significance: Jenny’s only sibling Jill’s Birthday TODAY and Jenny’s Birthday coming up in a few days on Saturday! Jenny’s sister’s family is in this week for a visit with our nephew Nash. So far we’ve done some boating, wakeboarding, and beach-ing with a nice pizza delivery as well. Brother-in-Law Adam is allergic to non-hypoallergenic dogs (so pretty much most other than their 2 dogs), so we’ve been staying over with with them at Jenny’s parents’ place 45 min away when we’re not working (and our doggos have stayed in the basement or playing in the great outdoors). We’re still all Social Distancing and masking up in public + not hanging in person with extended relatives, so it’s hopefully been a safe visit. We still sanitize EVERYTHING that comes into our cars/ house and wear our KN95 masks indoors and in public when near other people, so we’ve been doing our part to stave off the Pandemic. Jill’s birthday is lake hangs with our immediate family with a homemade meal at the end, so it’s pretty low key, but still summery. Their baby’s Baptism is coming up tomorrow morning as well, so we are looking forward to little Nash’s special day.
With Jenny’s Birthday also coming up on Saturday we plan to as always get authentic tongue, chorizo, and cheek tacos on Western in South Bend, then taking them to a park to picnic and then hike. We may or may not include our doggos in that part, but we also hope to thrift a bit (maybe?) and relax after a crazy month/ past half year!
Thanks for checking in on this low key, but also chaotic personal update on the Weekly Wednesday! Next weekend we will be photographing Elise & Matt’s Chicago Engagement Session, so we’re excited to finally be able to do that to celebrate the wedding of these two which is coming up in a little over a month in Michigan! We’ll be sharing those Teasers here on the blog in a couple weeks, so check back in soon for that-!