Waiting for Tomorrow...

Today was not a good day.  Things did not go well.

I distinctly remember the moment that I made the Gospel my own... the day I became labeled as a "Christian". I was 11 years old, and I could take you to the very spot today. I wish I could say that I've never looked back on my faith. I wish I could say that I've always done things the way they were supposed to be done, but that would be a stretch. But, I've learned that I don't like who I am without Jesus.  And, like all great love stories, the God that pursued me through the Cross never let up, and still doesn't to this day, and for that I am unbelievably grateful.

What I need to get ahold of is that His story is so much bigger than mine.  It's a story of redemption and forgiveness and an all-powerful, perfect God becoming approachable to his imperfect creation.... me.  It's a story of rescue, and hope, and a rescue yet to come.  And it comes with the promise that every new day is full of new grace and new mercy.  

And I'm looking forward to it.

Dinner and a Movie

Hey guys... I'm not going to lie, we haven't done much photo-wise the last 2 weeks, as you probably noticed. :) This weekend is our first wedding of 2009 and we're so flippin' excited we can hardly sit still! Joe and Amanda have been through quite a bit this past year, and we're so happy for them to finally get married!

DINNER:

We've been working on our price list for 2010 the last few days and, honestly, pricing yourself is one of the toughest things to do as a photographer. So, to help with that, today we had our annual Spring meeting at Tuscan Moon (a classy little restaurant/grill on 5th Street in Kalona) with some great friends of ours... Linda of Drish Photography, and Sam and Stephen of SB Photography. They are both excellent photographers in our area, and it's been fun to bounce ideas off of each other, and brainstorm how we can do our jobs better and more efficiently. To Linda & the Benders... Thanks, you guys, for being awesome friends and business-mates!!

MOVIE:

For some reason, I couldn't sleep much last night. So, about 5:45 am, I crawled out of bed. I actually didn't know there WAS a 5:45 am, but apparently I was wrong. :) Anyway, I went to the office just to mess around on youtube for a little while, and I went to clips from one of my favorite shows of all time.... "Who's Line Is It Anyway." Ryan and Colin are two of the funniest people I think I've ever heard, and here's one of my favorite sketches from this morning. From about 3:45 into the movie, until the end, I laughed until I couldn't breathe.

And here's another one just because it's a free country... at least for now. ;)

Waiting For Summer

Things are pretty busy around here today, but with the fog as thick as it was in our backyard this morning, I took Alana out to paint a picture with my camera....  

WAITING FOR SUMMER...

Contest Winners

It's time! The moment 6 of you have been waiting for!!! Now, both of these winners were drawn from a hat, there was no outside influence, such as who's Christmas order was larger, or who got the biggest Wedding Album. :) haha.

PART ONE
We ran a two part contest this year, where one part was more difficult and actually required some action. Contestants were instructed to basically make someone's day this Christmas. I invited them to make cookies, or buy a gift, or do something nice for someone you don't know very well. We baked cookies and gave them to Jodi's doctor, and our UPS man.... very fun! Out of the 3 wonderful stories we received this Christmas, the randomly selected winner is....

Marcie + Chris!

Thanks for playing guys, and for thinking outside the box to make someone's Christmas even better!  You've won a Keurig Single-cup Coffee Maker compliments of GP!  

PART TWO

Part two of the contest was to simply send in a photo of your Christmas tree.  Everyone decorates their tree quite differently, and it's fun to see the different styles.  The only requirement was that there is a coffee mug included in the picture, so that I knew it was a recent photo.  The randomly selected winner is....

Nicole Chmelar!

Nicole wins a $15 Gift Card to Starbucks!  

•••

Thanks to all of you who sent in entries to both contests.... you will have more opportunities to win in 2009!  We are grateful to all of you who read the blog, and leave comments for us.  It's a blessing to be able to encourage and inspire you with our stories and our work, and it's quite humbling at times to realize that so many of you keep coming back to this blog to see what's going on at GP.  

•••

It was exactly one year ago, that Google Analytics and I began our courtship.  My role in the relationship was to paste a bit of code into our blog, and Google's responsibility was to use that code to keep track of who visited the blog, where they were from, their name, weight/height, social security numbers, credit card information and a whole bunch of useful information. Just kidding, it doesn't keep track of all that stuff.  If you're new to this blog, my name is Rodney and I am hilarious.:)

Now, I know some of these numbers aren't huge compared to some of our fellow photogs, but because I think it's interesting, here's some GP Blog end of the year stats:

• There were 39,000 visits to the GP blog from 71 countries with USA, Canada, Thailand, UK, and Germany having the top 5 most visits.

• 49 of the 50 United States visited the blog (c'mon Vermont!  Get your act together!) with Iowa, Pennsylvania, Illinios, Ohio, and Minnesota visiting the most.

• The average time visitors spent on the blog:  1 min, 30 seconds.

• 86% of visitors are using Windows PCs, and 12% are using Macintosh.

• 78% of readers re-visited the blog at least once.

• 14% came back 100 times or more last year.

• Monday was the day most people visited the blog. 

• October was month with the highest traffic.

• 4:00pm was the time of day the most people visited. 

Interesting, isn't it. :)

NEIPP

Happy Tuesday!! 

We were guest speakers at the North Eastern Iowa Pro Photographers meeting in Mt Vernon yesterday, and Jodi did a wonderful job of communicating our story and what we're all about. We basically talked about how we approach weddings and seniors, and the business behind it all.  Thank you to our friends Mindy and Jamie at Ovation for the invite!  It was fun meeting all of you who were there, and we look forward to seeing you again sometime!

•••

I've got some images for you tomorrow from Stephanie and Derc's wedding this past Saturday in Marion!  

See you then!

Recording

Hey everyone... Sorry I've been out of the blogging sync this week.  Here's the story:

In 2002, Jodi and I, along with 4 other people, started a Sunday evening service, called "O2" at our church, and I became the leader of the worship band.

After 4 years, the service ended, but the O2 band and I decided we weren't quite finished yet, and felt that God had more things in store for us.  So we continue to play camps, and churches, and youth groups several times each year in the MidWest, and it has been an awesome ride!  

So, back to why I haven't been blogging.... this week, we finally hit the studio and recorded our first CD!  Yeah, we were pretty excited since it's been a long time coming.  Anyway, you can head on over to our MySpace page to hear a few songs before the CD officially releases in a month or two.

 

I will resume the blog on Monday.... it's going to be a busy weekend! see you soon...

Roadtrippin' Day 3:

Here's part 3 of our trip last weekend.  We saw that funny Senior Center sign in Emmetsburg on Saturday, and decided that on the way home we would stop by every town that we came to and try to find something funny or unique in each one.   That goal turned into "let's drive down Main Street of every town" and actually was quite fun.  We discovered that each small town has it's own vibe, and it was pretty cool to try and figure it out. 

Here's a little bit of what we found along East 18:

This dandelion? is about the size of a baseball... by far the biggest one I've ever seen.

The appropriately named "Goodies Ice Cream" stop...

•••

Roadtrippin' Day 2:

I called this post "Day 2" because Day 1 was Tara and Josh's wedding, which hasn't been sorted through just yet.  We spent the weekend in northwestern Iowa, mainly because of shooting the wedding, but also because we brought our kids along.  We found a God-send of a baby-sitter for during the wedding, and then Saturday was family day!! 

At the wedding, we ran into the parents of one of our bride's from last October. They live in Chicago, so we were surprised to see them in Okoboji.  Turns out, they have a lake house nearby. We told them we had our children along, and they asked us to stop by for a visit. So, the kids got to go on their first boat ride ever!  Jackson had a blast on the boat... still not sure about Alana. :) Terry and Trudy... Thank you for letting us drop by! You helped to make our family weekend special! 

I think she was tired, but this was her face pretty much the entire ride.

Back at our hotel, we rode the escalator up and down... up and down... up and down...

Now, we're in Emmetsburg, and came across this little car shop on our way to the Pizza Ranch for supper.  There were 2 men, and lots of really old cars sitting around, so we asked if we could take some shots. I didn't really take pictures of most of the cars, since it was pretty dark in the shop, but we got a few.

I have to post this, because our 4yr old, Jackson, took it all by himself. 

This is Mike, the owner of the cars and drinker of the beer...

This sign cracked us up, and sparked a mini-adventure on Day 3 which I will post very soon...

The aforementioned Mike told us about this park, so we got rid of what energy was left after a long, busy day.

The Riggans :: Family

Jodi and I had our work cut out for us the other Saturday, when we had a multi-family session on the Riggan's farm.  46 people, in all, and despite the brutal wind, it went pretty well!  We also broke into individual family groups for some photos.  

•••

The other night, for the first time in....well, a long time, I actually watched part of a hockey game.  Let me preface that with the fact that almost ANY championship is worth watching in some respects.  During the regular season... yeah, pretty sure I'm not going to watch hockey.  But Detroit was playing for the championship and Pittsburg is playing to stay alive, so it was a pretty intense game, especially when Pittsburg scored with 34 seconds left in regulation to send it to the first of 3 overtime periods. I honestly couldn't care less who wins, but anyway... it was actually kind of fun to watch hockey.  *did I just use the words "fun" and "watch hockey" in the same sentence!??*

•••

BUSINESS + MARRIAGE = ONE

If you are a husband and wife doing photography together, you need to check out the One Conference hosted by our friends Jeff and Julia Woods.  There will be some big name photographers talking about how to make business and marriage balance when you work with your spouse.  It should be an awesome 3 days! 

Weekend

Monday night found us taking our kids to the Iowa City Park for a reckless fun time with Stephen and Samantha Bender's kids.  Jackson and Grant seem to always have so much fun together running wild, and we always have fun trying to keep up. :)  Unfortunately, the little train wasn't running yet, so we had to settle for the carousel and other rides.  Then, later on, we found them peeing on a tree in the middle of the park.  Stephen and I were proud fathers at that point, and I think I even caught a "That's my boy!"  

They are "patiently" waiting for ice cream at Dairy Queen.  Out of the two windows that were open, I apparently picked the slow line because that's what it was.

Memorial Day

Across the street from our church is a cemetary, and today I stopped by to take some pictures.  There's something cool about seeing all the flags, and I had a moment with Jackson, our 4 year old, to explain to him what the flags were all about.  They fly to remind us of the people who died so that we can go to church, and speak our mind, and so many other things.  They fly to remind us that, although we live in a great country, freedom does not come cheap.  It comes at a great cost.  

To all of you who have fought for our country..... Thank you.

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