Family, Photography, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Pose Ideas for Husband and Wife Pictures

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Well January was kinda crazy. I was trying to get my life back together after the holidays. We went on vacation in October and November. Then Christmas came along and my birthday. I also spent all January trying to recover from being sick and my data disaster. Now it’s already mid February…  Crazy! Good news! My computer is cleaned. The laundry is finally caught up and my apartment looks decent. I feel like I can actually sit down and write a nice blog post cause my kids are taking naps. So here we go!

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My old roommate Catherine came into town and she wanted an updated family picture.

Catherine and Dalton said they didn’t want another picture in front of fall colors nor did they want her pictures to look like engagement pictures.  So this is what we came up with:

Theme: Urban

Location: 341 S. Main Street, Salt Lake City, Utah – Alleyway Between Maxwell’s and Array Salon

Time: We did dusk/twilight but it didn’t really matter too much because this area is in between tall buildings that block the sun.

I wanted to point out how good they were at posing!!! They came up with a lot of creative husband and wife / couple poses.

So, I want to write a little more about Catherine. She was one of the seven girls I ended up rooming with during my first year of college. She is amazing! She has so many talents especially in writing and journalism. My favorite thing about Catherine is that she makes everyone feel genuinely loved.

Every guy loved Catherine and wanted to date her. She ended up waiting for Dalton while he was on his 2 year LDS mission. They got married in the Bountiful Utah Temple in December of 2011.

Catherine and Dalton have been married for a little over two years and it’s obvious that they are really happy.

So what’s their secret? Why are they so happy? How are they making their marriage work?

I asked her specifically about how has their decision of being married in a LDS temple has helped their marriage.

This is what Catherine said:

“Because we were married in the temple, we are able to connect every choice we make in our lives to our overall purpose and ultimate destiny. Our journey together is real. When we face trials and uncertainties in life, we can always find joy in knowing there is a purpose and a plan for us. The temple made us an eternal team, and we are always reminded of that when we go back to the temple. This encourages us to focus all of our attention on being the best supporter we can of our teammate’s goals and dreams.”

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Who are you?

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Every person on this planet is a child of God.[1]  Each is a precious, son or daughter of a Heavenly Father. What does this mean?  Why do we care?  Well the succint answer is that this simple fact makes all the different in our day to day actions.

Who is God, our Heavenly Father? That is one of the most important questions to answer in this life (and can only truly be answered by praying to Him).  But I will give a short synopsis of who I know He is, and why that makes a significant difference in my life.

Heavenly Father is a loving, perfect, just, merciful Father.  Much as a goodly Father listens to his small children, talks to them, helps them understand their world, and guides them, our Heavenly Father does to us in our world.As a small child is in his Father’s care, so are we. Our Heavenly Father “wants to communicate with us, and we can communicate with Him through sincere prayer.”

Because each of us is the child of a perfect, omniscient, loving  Heavenly Father, each of us has divine potential to become like Him.  We may, through faith in the Savior Jesus Christ, repent, and be baptised, and be changed into a better person everyday, en route to eventually attaining perfection. This is our Fathers goal, so see each us reach perfection. And I know it is possible!

One of the best ways for us to learn how to be perfect is in our families.  Heavenly Father made it so that children are naturally born only into families with a mother and father, so that we could prepare to become a perfect Parent as He is and return to live with Him one day. Even though sometimes our earthly father or mother is missing from our lives, He is still our Heavenly Father and is constantly there providing for us, listening to our cries, and helping us.

But as is all good stories, their is an evil character as well as the good.  Satan, the great master of lies, is concurrently trying to bring us down to destruction, and cause us to fail in reaching perfection.  He knows that if he can trick us, he can destroy our happiness, and thus is constantly seeking to tear down, destroy, confuse, and hinder all that is good.  His primary focus is to destroy families, and cause disbelief in Jesus Christ, because that is the center of our happiness and salvation. [2]

Thus comes to one of the greatest and most important gifts given to every single person… the power to choose.  Because God knows we cannot become like Him without choosing to do so, He has made us  free to choose good or evil.  To choose if we will seek for God, or follow Satan.  There are no other alternatives, although it may appear so.  Eventually all have to make the choice whether they will believe in God, or not, and thus follow Satan.  But the freedom to choose is ours, and remains ours as long as we do good. [3]_MG_8987

There will be temptations and persuasions from both sides, as we can see throughout life.  The powers of good and evil are in constant struggle. But we can choose to follow the Good,  to believe in our Heavenly Father, to follow His commandments and eventually one day return to our Father in Heaven.  He has given us a guiding roadmap, through the Bible, the Book of Mormon and the living Prophets today.  He has not abandoned us and loves us more deeply than we can imagine.

Even if we follow the good there will be problems and trials.  Our loving Father gave us the freedom to choose, and with that freedom we will make mistakes. Just as a good father lets his child have the freedom to ride a bike, he also must allow us the possibility of falling over and scraping our knee, otherwise we would not be able to learn.  Sometimes we have problems just because we live in a mortal world where sickness, disease, disasters and other things happen.  But the truth is if we follow Heavenly Father’s plan, and believe in Jesus Christ we can return and live with God one day, in spite of all the problems and trials of this mortal test.  And I’m sure it will be a sweet family reunion for all, if we have chosen to believe in and follow our perfect, loving Father in Heaven.

-Dallin

1. We are Children of God https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1998/10/we-are-children-of-god?lang=eng.

2. The Family Proclamation http://www.lds.org/topics/family-proclamation

3. Book of Mormon; 2 Nephi 2:27 “Wherefore, men are afree according to the bflesh; and callthings are dgiven them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to echoose fliberty and eternal glife, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be hmiserable like unto himself.”

Child #2: Quentin, Children, Family Life, Photography

Quentin FAQ

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I spend so much time talking about Micah but I have another kid named Quentin. He’s 6 months almost 7 months old. He is a very very good baby. He eats well and sleeps well. He has such a tender and gentle personality. Quentin gets frighten really easily which doesn’t help having a loud two year old around. Micah really likes to scare Quentin. Quentin is also very tough because he has to withstand wrestles and toys being thrown at him. Poor little guy. He can sit but has no desire to start crawling.

  1. Is it a girl? No, Quentin is a boy with a lot of hair. Here’s a picture of Quentin’s hair at birth.
  2. Was Quentin born with that much hair? Yes, he was born with a lot of hair! He has already had 2 hair cuts! I’ve cut off about 3.5 inches of hair already. He had hair down past his shoulders. Here are his new born pictures.
  3. Did Micah have that much hair? No, Micah was baud. See picture here.
  4. Where was Quentin Born? He was born in Ireland at the National Maternity Hospital on Holles street. [Side note: He was born on the fourth of July!… oh the irony] Here’s his birth announcement.
  5. So can he still be president of the USA? We have gotten this question so many times! But yes he can because he is solely American… no other country has claimed him to be a citizen.
  6. Is Quentin an Irish citizen? Unfortunately, no. He has an Irish birth certificate. We’d would have to go back for 2 to 3 more years before he becomes an Irish citizen.
  7. Did you plan on having a baby in Ireland? Originally, we wanted to come back to Utah to have the baby but then we fell in love with Ireland and their maternity care so decided to stay. Also, they wouldn’t let me fly internationally after I was 26 week pregnant.
  8. Did you have good maternity care in Ireland? Amazing!!! My opinion is that I had better maternity care in Ireland than in the US.
  9. Was it hard to get Quentin back to the USA? It all worked out. You can read about the miracle here.
  10. Is Quentin big for his age? Yes, he’s almost 29 inches which makes him about 100+% in height. He weighs about 20.5 pounds which is about 80%. He is the size of Micah at 1 years old! I guess we also have to take in account that he was almost 2 weeks late!
  11. Why did you name him Quentin? or Did you name him after Quentin Terrantino? It was the only name Dallin and I liked! I’ve always liked the name. There was also a store in Ireland named Super Quinn and a city name Quin in Co. Clare Ireland. We thought we would call him Quin but when Quentin came we have stuck with Quentin. No, we didn’t name him after Quentin Terrantino. Sometimes we tell people that we named him after Quentin L. Cook.
  12. Why is Quentin’s middle name Liam? I really like the name Liam. Dallin wasn’t too happy about it at first but then we found out the Liam is the Irish word for William. William is the name of Dallin’s dad. We already have a lot of nephews with the middle name of William so we went with Liam. 🙂
  13. Who does Quentin look like? Right now we don’t think Quentin looks like Micah at all. He kinda looks like Dallin but we think he mostly looks like May Bo.

Child #1: Micah, Family Life, Parenting, Toddlers

Paper Snowman and Other Preschool Ideas

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Micah has been needing a lot of attention and stimulation lately. My sister-in-law sent me this PDF Calendar of one year Preschool Ideas. I’ve been trying to do one or two things with Micah everyday. We made a paper snowmen and snow flakes this week. Before we made the snowman, we read this book called Snow by P.D. Eastman that we got from the library. I really like to read P.D. Eastman books to Micah. Another one of our favorite by Eastman is The Best Nest. Even though Micah is just 26 months old, I feel like he has a really good reading comprehension. I’ve been needing to read him stories with more complicated story lines. He is also starting to read memorize words in books. I’ve really been trying to read more to him everyday and we try to go to the library once a week for story time.

Like I said in our new years goals, this year I’m going to focus on teaching Micah how to read and do simple math. Micah already knows the whole alphabet and count to 20. He has an incredible attention span for another numerical or problem solving. He sat down for an hour with me to do three different – 24 piece wooden Thomas the Tank Engine puzzles. Micah repeats everything I say so I really have to be careful. It’s funny hearing use all my euphemisms like “Oh my goodness!!!” “So funny!” “You’re silly!” “Go to your room!” Micah put me in time out yesterday in my room. I don’t even know what I did wrong. Two year olds are so funny.

In the January 2014 New Era there’s an article titled Preparing Gifts for Your Future Family. The article counsels the kids to start this year to learn talents that they could use in their future such as writing, math, music and art. Lastly, it talks about the gift of repentance and getting our lives in harmony with the God.  It’s a good article! I guess these talents can be developed at a very early age.

What kinds of talents do you want your kids to develop?

Family Life, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Belated Happy Birthday to Me! – Advice Needed

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THANK YOU x 1,000,000!!! For all the nice Birthday comments, wishes, messages, notes, calls, emails, cards and text. I read every single one of them and wish I had time to write everyone of you back personally!
We celebrated by going to Tucanos. It seemed like everyone at Tucanos was having a birthday. That’s probably because they give out a free meal on your birthday! We’ve never done it before because I never remember to sign up but I was so happy when I got my free meal card in the mail. Micah got in free so we really only had to pay for Dallin’s meal. It was awesome and super yummy Brazilian Churrasco.
After Tucanos, we played games with neighbors. We played the Celestial Marriage Pursuit game. It was a funny Mormon version of the Newlywed game.
We also took Micah and Quentin to an indoor fun park this weekend. Micah enjoyed going on all the rides and insisted on riding the merry-go-round by himself! Dallin and I are way too big for the playground but the rules said that kids under the age of 3 needed to have parental supervision the whole time. So we took turns going into the jungle gym with him. Dallin had fun but my knees just hurt.
Funny side story — I was crawling in one of the longer tunnels and I was really struggling. My face probably looked really scary because a little kid coming from the other direction said to me “Can you not make that face?” [Blahahaha!] At the time I didn’t think it was so funny cause I really felt like I was stuck in the tunnel so I said to him “Sorry I cannot” with the same facial expression and crawled as fast as I could out of that tunnel.
Anyways… I need your help! I got a new set of the 2013 edition of the scriptures for my Birthday. My old set was falling apart. I read these books pretty much everyday for the last 6 years! I’ve taken my scriptures around the world with me. I treasure the scriptures and I honestly just can’t go a day without reading them. I sometimes read scriptures on my phone or iPad but I LOVE reading scriptures while holding a physical book. I don’t think I can ever give that up books even in the digital age.
My question is: How do you mark up your scriptures? I’m trying to figure out how to mark my new ones up.
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Architecture, Family Life, Photography, Temples, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Rexburg Idaho Temple at Sunrise

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This is a picture of the Rexburg Idaho Temple at sunrise taken on Thanksgiving morning 2013. One unique thing about this temple is that there is a big wheat filled in front of it. There is also a bunch of wheat in the temple garden and wheat carvings in the architecture. Wheat is a symbolizes the righteous people being gathered together in the Parable of the Tares in the New Testament. 

I haven’t felt like blogging the last couple of days because I lost about 300 gb of data while I was backing up my pictures. I accidentally unplug my 1TB hard drive during a massive data transfer. When I plugged it back in the computer went ahead and tried to fix the corrupted files but instead half of my pictures/videos disappeared. I was emotionally distraught for a few hours before I could stop moping about it but actually do something about it (I need to get over my picture addiction… haha!). Over the last week I’ve been able to recover around 15,000 files after consulting with my family and friends. I also read lots of online forums. A lot of the files I found were corrupted but I’m grateful for the ones I did find. This experience has been a blessing in disguise. First, because I did have a back-up of most of the pictures so I didn’t loose too many… just about 4 months worth of pictures. Second, I got to use the skills I learned studying computer science in school about data storage and data deletion. Third, I learned NEVER to use ctrl-x for video or picture transfer. Fourth, it made me more humble and also grateful that only half the files disappeared and not all the files. Fifth, I am never letting that happen again!! I’m so grateful I found so many files but it is going to take days to organize the files and check for duplicates. It would have been much easier if this never happened but of course, life doesn’t always work that way. God does want us to learn from our mistakes.

I was able to recover pictures I took back in November when our family took a trip up to BYU-I in Rexbug, Idaho for Thanksgiving. I prayed hard that I would find these temple pictures because I knew I only had one copy of them. I felt confident that I would find this folder but all the methods of data recover I tried didn’t work or the files I did find were corrupted. I guess my faith was tested.

Finally, last night I found these files while searching through  ~121,000 possible deleted files using Recuva.

What a big blessing! I know Heavenly Father answered my prayer. He really didn’t have to but I know God is very merciful and full of grace if we are willing to pray to Him and have faith.

What blessings have you seen in your life lately?

Child #1: Micah, Child #2: Quentin, Family, Family Life, Landscape, Photography

Family Pictures: Emigration Canyon, Utah

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I had a vision of having our family pictures taken on the top of a snowy mountain so we drove up Emigration Canyon in Salt Lake City, Utah to take these pictures. I think they turned out OK for being impromptu! 🙂

Why is it called Emigration Canyon? Wikipedia says:

Emigration Canyon was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1961. It is significant in Utah history as the original route used by pioneers entering Utah. It was part of the Hastings Cutoff route used by the Donner Party in 1846, and where the Mormon pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. As Brigham Young looked over the canyon, he declared, “This is the right place. Drive on.” These words have become famous in Utah history. The event is commemorated with This Is The Place Heritage Park at the mouth of the canyon. Throughout Emigration Canyon, there are several historic markers designating camps, trail markers and milestone where the Mormon Pioneers passed while on their way to the Salt Lake Valley. One example of these milestones is called Lost Creek Camp.

We used my brother’s Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM Ultra Wide Angle Zoom Lens for Canon SLR Cameras.

Wide angle lens are great for landscape shots.

We took these with a tripod so that’s why my kids don’t always look at the camera. I’m going to create a device one day that will capture my kids attention while my camera is self timer on a tripod… lol!

Enjoy!

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Family Life

Our Blog Goals for 2014

Happy New Years Eve!!!

This is the time where everyone is making their new year resolutions. Dallin and I want to go on a date every week in 2014. We want to teach Micah how to read and Quentin how to walk/talk. We want to continue to workout 5 times a week and stay physically active.

So we decided we needed some blog goals. Here are our family’s 2014 blog goals:

What are your blog goals or family goals for 2014?

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