I had a wonderful time working with Amy, Tim and their 3 children at their wedding celebration this weekend. I am so glad that your family made you two have a party to celebrate. You are both very special and deserve it. Here are a few of my favorite pictures of the day. I am still editing but should have a teaser collage up for viewing tomorrow.  Thanks for letting me share your wonderful day.

Since this was my first time in the ocean we didn't spend any time at the pool. We enjoyed the sandy beach and the salty air. It was beautiful but I did have one strange side effect to swimming in the ocean. My hands, feet, ankles and joints swelled. The only time I have ever seen this happen was when my best friend was expecting a baby and she was super swollen. You can see by the picture of my feet in the sand how awful my feet look. It was crazy. After two days of being home in the great frozen north my feet and hands were back to normal. Strange huh?

Our last day there was a storm rolling in from the north west and I got a really great picture of my hubby out in the surf with the storm clouds coming in to meet him. I made it in color and B&W.  Hubby really loved playing the surf that the storm was bringing in. He spent two house just sitting letting the surf hit him.

We also had a couple of pictures we had Sandals Staff members take of the two of us. If not I wouldn't have any pictures of me there. I didn't look my best but I was having fun!

Well I will post a few more bird pictures later but I didn't really take much more of a variety what you have already seen. I have more Zoo pictures but I think I will post a slideshow once I get them all edited.

 This weekend is going to have high temperatures in the low teens and chance of flurries. Making the out of doors no place for a bride in a sleeveless gown. So I have made arrangement with the Quilters Hall of Fame located in the historical Marie Webster House in Marion, Indiana to open for us on Saturday so my Bride and Groom have a beautiful and comfortable place to take pictures. This house has three restored fireplaces and a beautiful restored staircase with awesome lighting and great big (empty right now) rooms with big windows. Lovely wood work. What a wonderful romantic place to take pictures. I really love this old house and I think it is a perfect solution to my what to do in the middle of Indiana winter problem.  I plan on giving them a donation every time I am allowed to use the building because they didn't ask for any compensation and I feel it is necessary to thank them for their hospitality.

I don't have any pictures of the inside yet but here is an old outside pictures from 2003 before they installed the beautiful beveled glass sidelights around the door.

  Well I finally am caught up on a few things and now...(trumpet fanfare)  here is the report on the Bridal Show. I get there in Friday to set up and find out that the curtains on my booth  are not only not white like my radio sales rep said but they are nonexistent. There are no "booths" only a bunch of 8x8 tables crammed into a 400 square foot room. Thankfully I was against a wall but what a wall. There was a door behind me and an open sliding curtain to my right. Yikes. So my whole booth plan had to be rethought and minimized. Thank heavens for 3M Command wall hooks. They saved the day for my banner and my 16x20 frames.

Lone Oaks Floral did give me a beautiful bouquet of flowers for my booth and I handed out about 2 dozen of their cards.

After running an orange extension cords behind three other participant's displays I finally got my electricity I requested and my slideshow and large rented flat screen monitor gave me quite alot of attention. I was very glad. I didn't actually book any weddings at the show like I hoped but I did get alot of people sign up for my drawing and I need to contact my two winners and send thank you letters to the others that signed up. I guess time will tell whether it was a worth while thing. I am considering signing up for the Anderson, Indiana show. It all depends on who I book between now and the end of the month. Although running a business debt free sounds like I good idea it really is a hard thing to do. Sigh.

The 5 inches of snow already today have me feeling like a nap is in order. I guess I am going to have to haul out the big guns and open the two liter of Vault.

Well I still need to sleep before the show but then it is later today. I will post a picture of my "booth" and the whole story around that saga tomorrow evening. Do you ever get nervous about really dumb stuff? I am so nervous about this show. I guess this makes me a real business now. My accountant told me this year I need to pay taxes quarterly. Maybe that is another sign too.

While I was bopping around the Sandals Resort in Nasau taking pictures I got to chatting with one of the photographers and she asked if I could tell her more about that funny thing on my flash. LOL! I swear Gary Fong's Lightsphere get's me more attention than another piece of equiptment I own. The photographer said her manager would be interested in it.

So I went into their little store and chatted with the manager and she was so excited about the Lightsphere Cloud she said she was going to talk to her boss about outfitting the entire Sandal/Beaches photography staff with them. I hooked her up with Gary's estore and I hope they do just that.  Here are the example pictures I took for them and a picture of the manager with my lightsphere. Sorry the picture is not that great because I had to use direct flash.

       Direct Flash                                Ceiling Bounce                   Lightsphere PJ w/ internal dome

There is something wonderful and fun about birds bathing. When I caught this guy taking a bath I was just loved watching him and list long neck do their thing. Oh he splashed and flopped. I was so wrapped up into the first few minutes that Hubby had to remind me to take pictures. Here are my favorites from Mr. Flamingo's bath day.

  Well the beach was all I could have hoped it would be. I know they tell you that the ocean is salt water but I still found it quite a suprise when I got some water in my mouth and still found it salty! lol!

Well even on the beach with my little point and shoot camera I couldn't stop myself from working a little. Hubby and I befriended this newlywed couple from New York at Sandals and we really liked them. They had such wonderful personality and were so cute together. I offered to take a few pictures of them and then send them to them. It was just my little F30 not my big Nikon so it was not as if I really was working, right?

Here they are after he just finished his ride on the wave runner.

One of the places we visited on New Providence Island in the Bahamas was The Ardstra Gardens, Zoo and Conversation Center. It wasn't a super large place but it was one to behold. Lots of feathered friends a some exotic cats. They were all napping the day I was there and I will post more pictures later today when I get time. The biggest attraction for me was the number of birds there at the Zoo. The National Bird of the Bahamas is the Flamingo and the Zoo had a great deal of them since they were one of the start attractions. Here are a few of my favorite pictures of these strange and beautiful birds.

Well we got home safely and only one back was lost and had to be delivered to our house. I am ripping pictures off my CF cards now. I will post more later today. I would like to say that it is good to be back but who really want's to leave paradise?