Three Doodles and Turkey Day!

So we went out to my Aunt Bev's house to celebrate Thanksgiving. Stacy and Jared had flown in from Colorado and they brought their new "POOCH!" home with them. Yes, his name is POOCH! (with the exclamation point). We watched football and ate some seriously yummy food! I honestly think Thanksgiving dinner is probably one of my favorite foods (all of it, even the cranberries). Aunt Beverly insisted we bring Bella and we couldn't disappoint our hostess, so I got up early and bathed her and combed out her hair, and along she came. Well, as everyone knows, she is CRAZY, so she began the fun by bleeding on the cream colored carpet from some cut on the pad of her paw :(. Great! We ended up having to put her in her crate due to the bleeding the running around the house like a maniac.

About 4 months ago, Aunt Bev got Cooper, her own miniature Golden doodle. Cooper is much smaller than Bella and is also much redder in color. Cooper seems to be slightly more mellow than our doodle bug.

The doodle fever continued to catch on, and Stacy and Jared recently added POOCH! to their household. Well, being the camera junkie that I am, I had to take a few pictures (oh about 200) to document his cuteness, and boy is he ever cute!

Currently, I am stuck at work right now, and November is one of the slowest month's for hotel rooms in the Washington, D.C area, so if anyone would like to come and visit the Nation's Capital just let me know, I can hook ya up with a pretty decent deal on room :) (www.Americanahotel.com) With that said, I had enough time to update my blog, since it has been so long!!

Thanksgiving is a time to be with family, and I am glad that I got to spend it with my hsuband, parents, brother, cousins, and canine family-- however Sam and I both missed all our family down in Florida and we hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!! We miss you all.

POOCH!


Here is a Picture of the other 2 doodles when they were cute pups like Pooch! The first is cooper and the second is Bella. She of course is the cutest of all (and no I am not biased :)

Cooper

Bella girl

Coming Home

We left St. John's Island at 11:00 am on Saturday. It was a sad day. Our flight took off out of St. Thomas about 3:45 and let me tell you how that went. I shall preface this with the fact that I dislike flying with a passion. It used to not bother me, and I am not sure exactly why it does now, but perhaps there is something about not having any power to protect myself if something was to go wrong that really just does not sit right with me. Okay. So, we go through Duty Free and buy 6 bottles of liquor, that we now have to carry on along with all are other bags, so we get to the gate and start the "boarding" process (I hate this process. Too many people in too small a space ALL trying to SHOVE that over sized ROLLER BAG in the over head compartment, because they are trying to not give the STUPID airline company more of their money with the newly implemented bag fees) Sam and I arrive at our seats 13 A and B, and there is two other people just sitting down in the seats. Well, their tickets and our tickets assign the four of us to those two seats, greeeeattttt. So, we have to make our way down the aisle to the back of the plane to alert the flight attendant of this situation. They boarded this plane from the back doors and the front doors, so of course everyone was trying to go the opposite way that we were trying to go with 2 lap tops, camera bag, pillow, purse, and 6 bottles of liquor, wonderful. To make matters worse, we were missing the gator game during the ordeal, and then there weren't two seats together. So, I am ticked off at this point, and the flight attendant goes, "it is a full flight" and I said okay, and again she said "it is a full flight". I don't really care. The reason I booked my tickets together, was perhaps so I could actually sit with my husband, not 7 rows away. Ugh. If we operated this way at the hotel, we would shortly run out of customers. Geez, why do airlines get to be so annoying.

We landed in Ft. Lauderdale after a bit of turbulence and began running to the airport bar to see if we can catch the tail end of the Gator game, which we have been informed via our electronic device (which I think was not approved for use at the point my gator fanatic husband started texting to get an update) that it was tied 13-13 and there were about 10 minutes left in the fourth quarter. Well, rest assured, we rooted them on to a victory and caught the last leg of our flight into Washington.

They re-arranged our seats and we got to sit together so I was happier, because this flight was much more turbulent. We arrived, only to be rudely awakened by raining and 40 degrees. Can I go back to the islands, PLEASE?!

Yesterday, I enjoyed a relaxed birthday party that mom planned. My cousins and sister came over and we had some yummy lasagna and watched the worst team in the NFL (Redskins) lose once again. Ugh.... I will always be a fan, but these guys are really terrible (I blame their stupid owner, but that is another blog entry)

So, in closing, I am going to post some more pictures to remember our WONDERFUL week in paradise. It couldn't have been more perfect.

Palace on Paradise Island

Saturday, October 10 2009 we left the Nation's Capital for St. John's Island in the Caribbean. We were meeting up with our cousin's Stacy and Jared who moved to Denver in March of 2009. Upon arrival to St. Thomas and after checking in at the Westin lounge we were notified of the fact that our 3 bedroom Villa was all ready for check in. Let me just say we did not reserve a 3 bedroom 3.5 bath 3000 square foot private pool private jacuzzi VILLA, but we were GLADLY TAKE IT. Our room price was $173.00 plus tax and resort charges per night, the normal rate on this villa is $2050.00 per night before those other fees. We basically have been upgraded to the best place ever!

This island is so amazingly gorgeous. Sam told me we are moving here when he gets out of the Air Force :) The ocean is crystal clear and the beaches are sandy white. There are mountains and iguanas and cool Caribbean music. The people are American, however they drive on the wrong side of the road, and let me tell you that takes some getting used to.



I just wanted to write a short update of our vacay down here, however, I will share more later. It is time for the room service to be arriving :)

Cavalia Horse Production

The Cavalia show is currently in the greater Washington, D.C area, about a block from the Americana. The show coordinator booked about 300 room nights at the Hotel during the duration of the show. As part of this, we managed to get a few tickets to go see exactly what the show was all about. It was pretty cool for sure. Sam and I - Melinda and Robby all headed is over to the 3:00pm show today. They have over 60 horses in the Stable there, 28 being Stallions and the rest are geldings (which they defined as neutered males haha) . Just for the non-horse folk reading along, a gelding is properly refered to as a castrated male. You neuter dogs, you castrate horses. Anyways, I guess that is not super important, though I felt I needed to clarify. You are not suppose to take pictures during the show, so I only snuck a few (and without flash). Other people were also taking pictures, so I wasn't the only rule breaker.

Beach Photoshoot and Some Bridal Portraits
Photography by Kellee Whitehurst and Rebecca Rosin
Creative Editing by Marianne Elizabeth

Photoshop can be so much fun, and so time consuming. You can do such great things in it, however, I recently read an interesting quote somewhere that was discussing actions/textures "There is no action for bad photography". This is so true, you must start with a decent image, in order to achieve the best results in post processing.

~Marianne

Assistant Shooter

This weekend I was lucky enough to be able to be an assistant shooter at a wedding in Lusby, Md! I was in charge of shooting the Groom and groomsmen before the wedding and then I assisted during and after the wedding. Let me preface this by saying I was super nervous going into the event. I got this opportunity through Sam. He works with a gentlemen at his job that is a professional photographer. That is, when he is not taking care of a specific air plane.

David Robinson from aspect-photography.com was gracious enough to allow me to assist him on this wedding! All week leading up to the wedding, he answered my NUMEROUS questions, as I tried to prepare for the event. I have much learning to do yet still, I think I took a couple decent pictures (if you take 1000 you should get 1 or 2 good ones, dontcha think?!) I am very thankful for the experience I will be gaining while working with David!