My wonderful friend Jess is just that. Wonderful. She's beautiful, talented, smart, chill, artistic, blessed, need I say more? She house-sit for my family while we were away, and when I returned home she had left a playlist on my iTunes entitled, "and then jess stayed over." I've been listening to it non-stop since I got home. Much to my surprise, I saw the last song on the list was called "Maybe" by Jess Janz. What? I clicked on it and the most amazing song came on. Jess is a guitar player and a song writer and a fantastic one at that. She's opening for Jacob and Lily (whose music is featured on my website) next month, and I'm just so excited for what life has in store for her. I was out location scouting this morning, and found a few places to keep in mind. This place however, I found a few weeks ago and I have been DYING to shoot at. So we did.

Well about 30 minutes into the shoot, a guy walks to the back of the property where we were taking pictures and asks us what we're doing. I explain that I'm a photographer and I loved this property and I've been looking at it forever wanting to shoot. I said I'm so sorry, but is this alright with you? I said, I would have totally phoned and asked, but I didn't see anybody living here and it's kind of abandoned. In the end, he gave me his phone number and said just to call before I shoot on his property again. It was worth it though! I get so frustrated looking for locations because it's a lot of wasted hours, and most of the places I find I can't get to that safely. We entered in his cell phone # into Jess' cell phone while we were shooting. When I dropped Jess off at her car, she handed me the number of the owner with the title, "Sketchy." Hah! I have to admit though, the place is a little creepy...abandoned places tend to give off that vibe.
































Here's the slideshow of our session. I just LOVED shooting this it was a blast. Oh, and the girl singing? It's HER! Now you have to listen to it, right? Presenting "Maybe" by Jess Janz.

I'm in the middle of trying to get a big blog post up about the last two days of our Arizona vacation, and I'm sick of the computer! As a photographer, for almost every hour you spend behind the camera there are five or six behind the COMPUTER. Sometimes it makes me want to pull my hair out. But then I go downstairs and grab a cup of decaf green tea with a little bit of honey, breathe, and walk back up the stairs and start working again. It's going O.K. for me so far! :) I was sorting through the vacation photos my mom took on her Canon G9 point and shoot today and found these two shots she managed to take of me when I was checking out the day's photos.



I grabbed one of them and updated the little "introduction" and photos section of the blog right under the fancy header. See it? I promise to have that other post up soon. However, We have out of town family coming in to stay with us for the next four days with my Grandpa's funeral and all, so most of my time will be spent (hopefully) far away from this screen!

If you had asked me a week ago, what I thought I would be doing right now, at 6:26pm on Thursday, March 27th, 2008 I would have said, "Doing my hair after a long day of sun at the pool, and deciding what restaurant to go to for dinner." Well, our plans have changed. The last few days of our vacation have been quite eventful. To start it off, my Uncle Steve got quite sick the latter half of our first week in Arizona. For about 48 hours, it felt like it was just the five of us (my family of four and our aunt) on vacation. Just as he started to get better, my dad became violently ill. We're quite sure it was food poisoning at a restaurant we ate at on Sunday. All through the night and throughout Monday, he was in a comatose state. Once again, it was the five of us, albeit a different five of us. We had an amazing dinner at P.F. Chang's while my poor dad stayed home in bed. After getting in the door of our condo at 7:15pm, we found my dad for the first time in 36 hours sitting up on the corner of the bed.

His dad, Leonard Wesley Peterson, had passed away at 6:05pm that same night. How awful is it that the first time my dad can sit up without feeling nauseated is just to answer a phone call from his cousin letting him know his dad has passed away. My brother went and fetched Steve and Lyla (my uncle and aunt) from their condo and shared the news. We had a calm evening just with the family, and we tried to sort through funeral plans and airline changes and everything. Death is really stressful sometimes, isn't it? We were planning to stay in Arizona until Saturday morning, then drive to Vegas, and fly out Sunday. We changed flights right away and flew out just this morning. So here I am. At home in my bedroom in Surrey, BC. But enough about me.

The last two or three years have been very difficult for Len, as he has been bounced around between assisted living to the hospital for months on end, finally to a few different nursing homes. We are all glad to see him go to Heaven and meet Jesus and all the loved ones that are there as well. Len was a great man who loved the Lord, fathered four children--two of which he lost tragically, was a great husband to his wife until she passed away from cancer fourteen years ago. Len was also a family history buff and loved to talk and write in detail about family history and stories of the generations that have come before. He published two books while in his eighties, detailing almost every year in his long life.

The following pictures are a tribute to my grandfather Len, born February 1, 1920 and passed away on March 24, 2008 at the age of 88.

I searched through our old photos and this one of my father and I
with Grandpa Len at his 87th Birthday party last February.


Grandpa Len with my Grandmother Evelyn on their Wedding Day in 1947.
Evelyn is just one of many people Len has been reunited with in Heaven as of Monday.