Leapidy Leap Leap Leap

My Leap Day is consisting of............

sock bun
red coat
glasses
library
homework
researching sheep shears for Anthro (i wish i was kidding)
Medical SW
Museums 1010
Interpersonal Communications
chocolate milk
asiago bagel
and class till 8:30 at night.

I know, I know....someone put a seatbelt on me, my life is crazy.

ANYWAYS,
Here is a video of Bea, the leaping lamb...In honor of Leap Day.  I'd suggest watching this 4 or 5 times to get the full effect and a possible occurance of a shakefit of giggles.



BAI!

Gospel Gem

"It is when we become angry that we get into trouble. The road rage that affects our highways is a hateful expression of anger. I dare say that most of the inmates of our prisons are there because they did something when they were angry. In their wrath they swore, they lost control of themselves, and terrible things followed, even murder. There were moments of offense followed by years of regret. . . .

So many of us make a great fuss of matters of small consequence. We are so easily offended. Happy is the man who can brush aside the offending remarks of another and go on his way."

-Gordon B. Hinckley

Ginger's Wings

Soooooooooo this one time, I ate dog food.

I was probably 4 or 5, and had gone over to my sister’s friend’s house with them for some reason. I don’t remember why…I was pretty young and wasn’t cool enough to be friends with any of their friends. (My sisters secretly/not so secretly despised me at this age, because i begged them literally everyday to play board games with me...Stratego..Sorry..Monopoly..you name it. They always said no.) My mom was probably tired of me annoying her..or had to run some errands..ANYWAY…I was there. And I remember, my sister’s SNEAKY little mean friend, Kelsey, telling me that her dog Ginger… could fly.

WHAT!?!? No……HOW!? And just like that I believed her. I imagined that old golden retriever floating around the room like it aint no thing. She told me that Ginger could fly, because she had magic dog food that she fed to her. And guess what? There was still a little bit of that magic dog food left in Ginger’s bowl over there. How lucky was I right in that very moment!?!? I slowly glance to her half-empty food bowl.....

Cut to Nicole’s thought process right now: Nicole eating out of Ginger’s foodbowl, nibbling a few bits of kibbles, and suddenly sprouting WINGS, ripping holes in the back of my esmerelda shirt, and gracefully flying up to the top of Kelsey's tall red bunk beds where my sisters were playing. HA! They would think I’M the cool one and not the little stupid one if I frickin had WINGS and could FLY from eating some stupid dog food they didn’t even THINK to eat!!!! Those fools would be SO JEALY and SO SORRY they didn’t take that chance! They'll wanna play with me once i have WINGS for heavens sake!!!!!!!!!

Cut to reality: Dogfood did not sprout wings, did not taste good, and I’m pretty sure Ginger got a litttttlllleee territorrial and did not take kindly to a miniature human eating out of her food bowl.

....I think this experience was one of the other times my family wondered if a genetic disorder had been suppressed for the past 4 years of my life until this moment.

I have made a decision...

Grad school: May 2013...

2 semesters... 600 clinical hours..& 40 credits.

bring it.

Denial & grieving

I have always known what denial was, but have never really experienced it to the full extent of what it can be, until last friday.
 When my mom got diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer a few years ago, i guess i sort of was in denial, but only a little bit. I accepted the diagnoses and would cry and pray about it often..but thats all. Whenever she would talk to me about plans for the unsure future, if she died sometime soon, how me and my sisters would have to move on and keep living our lives etc...i would just push it to the back of my mind, tell her i didnt want to talk about it and run to the bathroom to start crying. I thought that i was denying the fact that my mom could very possibly pass away in the near future. (thank heavens she is alive and well today!) But that was my way of living in denial. i just didnt want to discuss it with her, even though i knew it was there. i knew it was a possibilty, i knew i may have to deal with something traumatic soon...but i chose to not deal with it 100%, and thats how i got through. I accepted it, privately grieved over the possibility of losing my mother, but chose to not discuss it with her. I thought that was denial.

But last week at the hospital i ran into full fledged DENIAL, and i have never felt so strange talking to someone who was clearly not in the state of mind for greiving, when thats where her heart should have been. Everyone grieves differently...but i had never seen this before.

(Being a social worker in the hospital has opened up my heart to so many sad, and heartwrenching situations....sometimes i wonder if i can do this for the rest of my life, because it sort of makes me crazy.)

Last week we got a call while in our pediatrics meeting, that we had a '38 week demise' we needed to attend to in Labor and Delivery. The mother (lets call her..Jane Doe.)...had worked in an OBGYN office just down the hall from us at the hospital. She had difficulties with infertility, previously had a miscarraige, so this time around tried in-vitro. Jane finally carried and held on to her pregnancy, and im sure working in an obgyn got all the special treatments from the doctors there. She was close with everyone in the office, and everyone was very attached to her and this pregnancy she was trying so hard for. She recieved an ultra sound that day at work from her doctor and friend, and the doctor found that the baby's heart had stopped beating. And that was it. Jane immediately wanted things taken care of, so she checked into L&D about a half hour later. After Jane had left, the doctor was in tears for her friend, and handed off the case to a colleague. The nurses we talked to all were heartbroken, the social workers felt a pang of sadness...everyone involved in the case just had a heavy heart this day.

After giving Jane and her husband about an hour to get a grasp on the situation and get situated in their room, and try to fathom what had just happened, my boss and I entered their room. Initially, it just felt weird. Aside from her reddened eyes, it seemed like any other post-partum consult, but maybe the mother and father had been fighting before we entered?...which would have been weird for a situation like this. Jane's husband was sitting almost on the other side of the room, far away from her hospital bed. Jane was sitting up in bed and could tell was still trying to grasp that her 38 week old baby, whom she had felt kick in her tummy only hours before, had stopped living. I couldn't stop staring at her huge, beautiful pregnant belly.

We began to discuss the circumstances they were under and gently explained the greiving process that would be ahead of them in the days/months to come. We always talk about how men and women greive differently, and you could obviously tell with this couple we needed to talk to them in depth about this. Jane's husband seemed absolutely flat...had no emotion, and it was as if he was sitting in a work meeting just being BORED...bored and maybe a little bit angry. He showed nothing and did not look up to make eye contact when answering any of the questions. It was almost as if he was angry with Jane...so later on that day, we made sure to discuss that sometimes couples need to find a reason why this awful thing could have happened..and sometimes people blame theirselves or their spouses. We appropriately made it clear it was neither of their faults..talked more about the stages of grief they may be feeling..and moved on. He didnt seem to care or be listening to us. He still was flat and far away, obviously not present at the moment.

 Jane on the other hand, aside from her slightly swollen eyes, was very talkative...and giggling after almost every sentence. We began with the necessary mortuary paperwork (a word that you hate to even think about or mention in a situation like this) and all the other legal documents that needed to be signed that day. Paper after paper, not a single tear. Just professionalism and the occasional giggle. When she laughed, i watched her 9 month baby bump jiggle..and it pulled at my heart to know that her babe was in there, but she would never get to fully meet her child. Why was she laughing? Why was she alright and signing all these death certificates without any tears running down her face? Yes she was in shock..but I'd never seen shock like this before. And why wasn't her husband holding her hand or at least sitting by her?

I felt a complete punch in the stomach when we asked for the baby's name for the death certificate..Jane had to get her husbands attention because he was on the phone..and after a few seconds of questions to her husband, she said they hadn't really decided on a name yet. *painfully hurtful silence*  I wanted to get up and run outta that room. Not because it was a miserable subject, but because they weren't really even sad when they had said it. He was on the phone, she was being businesslike. If someone had asked me what i was planning on naming my unborn child who had literally just passed away, I would break down... absolutely break down. I'd kick the stupid social workers out and demand privacy and some tissues. I would make my husband get in the hospital bed with me, and hold me while i sobbed and snotted all over, while i held my pregnant belly.

Now please know, i am not criticizing their grieving process. Everybody grieves differently. And pure denial, not choosing to recognize what has happened, is just a serious defense mechanism. And I felt so sad for them. I felt even more sad on this case than the cases where I feel my eyes sting with tears when I see the mother cradle her empty stomach and talk about her baby she had just lost. I just wanted this couple to recognize what had happened...because the healing process would be so much longer if they chose not to accept what was happening.

Towards the end of the day, Jane had told us that she wanted to immediately make plans to get pregnant again and that her doctor said it was fine if she did. She still had her baby inside of her and she was already making plans for a new one. I couldn't understand it still. Medically and emotionally that is not the healthiest thing to do after a loss like this.

I knew the true grief this mom would experience would not hit for at least a week, maybe even a month-6 months. She was not dealing with the truth. This baby she had planned for, for a VERY long time, would not be coming home with her, and she claimed she realized it, but she didnt. I wanted to hug her and tell her to cry. I wanted to tell her husband to go hold her and hand let his wife know that it was going to be okay!

Doing grief counseling with couples during a fetal demise always pains me because i have a dear friend who has gone through this situation, and listening to the pain and emotions she went through over the months just made me ache for her and with her. It makes me hurt for every patient who loses a child. Whenever we get called onto a fetal death, especially a late-term  fetal death, it is very hard to grasp that the situation is real, and that people will live with this memory the rest of their lives. They will always remember that day on the calendar, and they will always remember the details about when they heard the awful news.

Perhaps the news had not hit Jane and her husband. Perhaps it hit them and they refused to believe it was real. Perhaps they had had so many let downs in the past, that they were used to grieving and this was just another hard situation they would have to get over and this is how they 'deal'.

I just hope that when i'm a legit social worker..and have a real, grown up job all by myself..I will be able to help grieving women in times like these. If i wasnt 'just an inten' i would start a greiving group at the hospital for moms who had lost their babies... because moms who accept the loss need help grieving and going through the motions to get back into their daily routines, but moms who don't choose to accept the reality of their loss, need it even more. And i pray i will be able to learn what to say and the appropriate actions to take in future cases like this one.

At the end of the day, after you've done all you can do, you have to let go of your cases and that sucks. But i still take them home with me and still think about them for a while until my head starts to hurt..and...until my heart settles and believes i've done everything i could have done to help those patients.

Grieving is hard, but living in denial is even harder.

Scooby & Pee

I had four very traumatic experiences before the age of 5. Two of them involoved a dog…the other two..urine. I’ll rotate subjects just to mix it up a bit.

#1- I went to “Great America” with my family this one time. I was 4, little, and adorable. I remember wearing biker shorts, a red sweater, and a neon baseball cap. I cant be sure, but I think I may have even been wearing a fanny pack. Yes, i'm sure i was. i needed it to hold my heart-shaped sunglasses. It was a kids dream…amusement park for a whole day!? Righteous. Me and my sisters went on all the little kiddie rides..and I sat out with my mom when they went on all the big kid rides. I remember all day my sisters and dad were trying to convince me to go on the rapids ride…I can’t remember what it was called, but the name was terrifying in and of itself..roaring rapids? Raging rapids? Grizzly rapids? Something. I was psyching myself out all day, trying to mentally prepare to pretend to be brave infront of my family and teling them I would go on the ride. All day my mind changed back and forth…well…all day my mother also made sure we were all properly hydrated. I had made up  my mind that sure I COULD go on the water rapids ride if I really wanted to…but the real reason I started protesting was because my tiny little bladder was suddenly so full, even the sound of water would probably make me EXPLODE. I don’t remember why I didn’t say anything…probably because my mom had asked me every hour ‘do you need to go to the bathroom Nicole?’ and I probably got annoyed…and stopped listening to my bodily functions and started protesting out of pure spite.

            So…there we are..my sisters and dad load onto the ride, and my mom and myself hung out on the side watching. We are watching..and watching..and I am seeing the rapids..listening to the rush of water… seeing waterfalls and splashes… and sprinkles..drizzles and wooshes.….and… WIZZ.  I could NOT help myself. Watching that water for just 5 minutes just made me LOSE it and I lost all control of my 4 year old tiny tank. I was so embarrassed, and waddled over to where my mom was sitting, and started crying. She looked at my wet widdle biker shorts, and im sure was a bit embarrassed herself to see her child obviously had pee running down her legs. Since I was crying hysterically, she said, ‘hey..i have an idea..why don’t we go to splat city!’ splat city was the waterish part of the park where kids could run through all these weird bucket fountains. I don’t know why it was called splat city..but I remember we weren’t allowed to go because my parents didn’t want freezing wet children in their car for an hour on the way home. Well HA to the HA! I tricked the system. We got there and I ran through every single fountain to cover up my obvious pee stain on the front of my shorts. My mom had proposed the perfect plan. I soaked myself in the fountains, and no one could tell I had peed myself. When we walked back to the rapids ride..my sisters, shocked and offended at the special treatment, said..’MOM!? WHAT!!! WHY DID SHE GET TO GO TO SPLAT CITY!?!?’ they were pissed, I was covered in piss, but smug and content at the same time. Winning.

#2- The first dog story….was a dream. More like a nightmare. I dreamt that Scooby Doo was walkin around on his hind legs in a detective suit looking for me. No no…. HUNTING me. Sraight up hunting me and wanted me dead. Everything around me was black. I was terrified, so I hid in my dream tent I conjured up. I was looking out the telescope for Scooby…and finally thought I had lost him. Dream-minutes passed and i was alone. I was safe! All of a sudden.. what do I see through my dream scope? Scooby. In a detective hat. Pointing a gun at me. He shot me. I screamed. I woke up covered in literal SWEAT AND TEARS.. Ran to my parents bed…and didn’t tell them for YEARS about that dream because I was so traumatized. This great dane will come in to play in just a moment.

Scooby: 1 Nicole: 0

#3- I had this friend in kindergarten…lets call her..Jules. Jules was known to have accidents quite often, and she peed herself at kindergarten probably every other week. Well, one day me and jules were having WAY too much fun on the playground. We were playing tag, and if I remember correctly, a boy was chasing us. Me and jules RAN to the top of the metal slide and waited for our attacker to approach us. (Please note: this metal slide got WICKED hot in the midday sun…and a fast slide down it always ended up with slight burns on the back of bare legs if you hit it just right). Jules got nervous and started sliding down the hot slide quite quickly all of a sudden. What was she thinking!? I remember the sound she made while sliding down..."WWoooaahhHHHHaauhghghuhahahhuh!" This wasn’t part of our plan! We were supposed to just wait at the top of the slide for at LEAST 1 more minute. But oh wait…why was she sliding so much faster than normal? Why was she acting so weird when she stood up? Don’t worry, she had politely left a trail of pee down the hot metal slide for me to follow. PANIC SETS IN. My attacker is approaching the slide. Do I back down and get tagged? Even if I WANTED to back down and accept defeat, there were 6 other kids perched on the cheese grater stairs waiting to slide down! I could not coordinate a group reverse..it was too complicated. So what did I do? Grabbed the burning hot sides of the slides…and slowly crab walked/slid down the slide, in jules hot pee, to the bottom of the slide. By now she had ran into hiding, I was covered in hot pee, and the unsuspecting kids were blaming ME for the mess on the slide as each of them slid to their doom.

#4- Kindergarten recess, after lunch, me and my bff brandi were playing hopscotch on the asphault. When all of a sudden…a GIANT great dane can be seen in the distance, bounding towards all of the unsuspecting kindergarteners, hungry for human flesh. Scooby. Wildly scrambling for a plan, brandi, terrified of dogs and mammals in general, suddenly goes catatonic for a moment.. and then she screams. My heroic side kicks in about 5 seconds into the ordeal. “RUUUUUNNN BRANNDIIIII! TO THE SWWWIIINNNGGGSSS! SWING HIGH BRANDI!!! RUNNNNN!” Scooby. The great dane was galloping towards me. Children were screaming and running to the jungle gyms, scrambling for the top of the slides, and brandi started to pump faster than I’d ever seen before. And where was i? I was dancing…with Scooby. Our eyes locked. I went left…he went left. I broke right..he broke right. We were 5 feet apart now. The dog was taller than me and resembled the detective who had murdered me. I lunged backwards, he lunged forwards…Scooby. By the grace of heaven, a yard duty caught wind of the canine intruder and caught its attention. It was just enough time for me to run to the swings and swing high enough that I could kick the dog in the face if it came too close. Finally the dog was caught, all the kindergarteners were in tears, and recess was cut short.

Scooby 1: Nicole: 1

Gospel Gem-Lighten up

These quotes....they do good things for my soul. And i hope you need them just as much as i needed them today.


We know that on some level Jesus experienced the totality of mortal existence in Gethsemane. It’s our faith that he experienced everything - absolutely everything. Sometimes we don’t think through the implications of that belief. We talk in great generalities about the sins of all humankind, about the suffering of the entire human family. But we don’t experience pain in generalities. We experience it individually. That mean Jesus knows what it felt like when your mother died of cancer - how it was for your mother, how it still is for you. He knows what it felt like to lose the student body election. He knows that moment when the brakes locked, and the car started to skid. He experienced the slave ship sailing from Ghana toward Virginia. He experienced napalm in Vietnam. He knows about drug addiction and alcoholism.  He knows the pain you live with when you come home to a quite apartment where the only children who ever come are visitors, when you hear that your former husband and his new wife were sealed in the temple last week, when your fiftieth wedding anniversary rolls around and your husband has been dead for two years. He knows all that. He’s been there. He’s been lower than all that.

Give him your whole heart, all the pieces, and let him heal you.

...If one great constant in the universe is the unfailing love of the Savior, the other great constant is his unfailing respect for human agency. He will not override your will, even for you own good. He will not compel you to accept his help. He will not force you to accept his companionship. He leaves you free to choose.

He’s not waiting for us to be perfect. Perfect people don’t need a Savior. He came to save us in our imperfections. He is the Lord of the living, and the living make mistakes. He’s not embarrassed by us, angry at us, or shocked. He wants us in our brokenness, in our unhappiness, in our guilt and our grief.


You know that people who live above a certain latitude and experience long winter nights can become depressed and even suicidal, because something in our bodies requires whole spectrum light for a certain number of hours a day. Our spiritual requirement for light is just as desperate and as deep as our physical need for light. Jesus is the light of the world. We know that this world is a dark place sometimes, but we need not walk in darkness. The people who sit in darkness have seen a great light, and the people who walk in darkness can have a bright companion. We need him, and he is ready to come to us, if we’ll open the door and let him.

-Chieko M. Okazaki (Lighten Up)

totter.

The worst day of my life occurred when I was 4 and a half. Im quite positive I woke up on the wrong side of the bunkbed.

                The first half of the memory is sort of vivid…but I remember everything that could go wrong, did. I remember I stubbed my widdle toe that morning and pretty sure I scream/cried like a banshee for a good 45 minutes. After the initial toe stub, I kept hurting myself as the day went on. I felt like demons from the eternal injury section of hell were literally working against me..and I was sure to die by the days end. Im pretty sure that day I burned my tongue on some mac and cheese, later bit my burned tongue, slammed my arm in my play desk, (in which i insisted on an ace bandage to heal me), tripped and scraped my knee, probably got smacked in the face/got my hair ripped out by 2 year old michelle a few times and the spiral just kept going downwards from there. 

Since my miserable day kept getting worse, my wonderful mother decided she would take us to the park to cheer me up even though it was bloody hot outside in ghetto old fremont. I was stoooooooked! I put my kicks on and me and all my sisters loaded into the big purple station wagon. She dropped us off at the toe-up from the flo-up community center park as previously mentioned before…(the same community center where I met my first love, Matthew Frankenstein of course), and then went to the convenience store a block away to pick up a ‘surprise’ for me to cheer up my little self.

             I sprinted to the jungle gym and was essentially running and playing my bad day right outta my 4 year old system. My sisters knew I was having a miserable day, so they tried to cheer me up as well. They even PLAYED WITH ME! (Sharon probably bribed them). I always begged my older sisters to play board games with me, but the next best thing was when Kristin allowed herself to actually get on the teeter totter with me. (she was 6, I was 4, and obviously not cool enough to be seen teetering with…but she made an exception for this day. i had a speech impediment and huge bangs...i don't blame her.)

                   Things were going GREAT and all of a sudden, the ominous station wagon pulls back up. Now…please imagine this in slow motion: happy little Nicole, laughing and giggling and teetering and tottering to my hearts desire. Hair flopping in the wind….little size tiny pink shoes bouncing off the ground…

As my mom gets out of the car and holds up the treats she got for us…. My sister Kristin obnoxiously screamed, “………………..POPSICLES!!???!!?!!!!!??!!!!!!??!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” and immediately leaped off the teeter-totter.... MID TOTTER….which left me to plummet down towards the ground a good 3 feet and land on my four year old fanny. HARD. Hard enough that I could  not get up, even at the sight of popsicles... and quickly started wail/sobbing once more, probably from getting the wind knocked out of me/being shocked my sister would do such a thing, im sure also rolling around in the dirt/sand underneath the teeter totter waiting for my inevitable death.

Aaaaaaaaaand I blocked the rest of the day out of my memory. The end.

Chapter 1- Speech impediments & my first love.

My friends always wonder how I remember so much crap. I must say, I have a great long-term memory. My short term is not so great, but whatever. Most people don’t remember lots from growing up.. but not me. I remember every nasty hot lunch I got..i remember getting yelled at by the yard duty when I wiped banana on my friends pants..i remember forgetting my ruler and sitting on the red bench at recess…I remember way way way too much.

So? i thought i'd jot down all the crap i remembered, just for kicks and giggles.

Chapter 1: The early years.

Pre-school. I was a skinny kid clad in green biker shorts and over-sized hand me down mickey mouse tee shirts.  Though dressed like an orphan with a bad haircut, I was adorable because I still had darling mini baby teeth. (It is a known fact that kids get annoying when their adult teeth come in all skeewompis and rigid, and it automatically changes their ‘cuteness’ into ‘obnoxious’ and then into ‘stop spitting on me and shut your mouth’ when they get braces and can’t talk like a human.

Back to cute me. I also had a marvelous speech impediment..which made me sound like I was deaf and possibly born in another country. My sisters can attest to this. Not being able to say my ‘R’s made watching ‘Weading Wainbow’ QUITE difficult when my mother couldn’t figure out the channel I wanted her to put on. (I’d sit in my baby sisters car seat and eat granola bars in front of our 12 channel 13 inch tv.  Yes, I was living the American dream, I was a speech-impediment-stricken-child  and loved rocking in an infant car seat at the tender age of 4). I dreamed of being a guest star on ‘don’t take my word for it…’ where obnoxious children in outdated sweaters would talk about their favorite kid's books. I believed I could memorize those lines better than any of those bi-racial kids.  I desperately wanted to meet Lavar Burton. And, I desperately wanted to be a star.

My speech impediment also hindered my eating habits, which caused both frustration and comic relief to my family, which pissed me right off. When I begged for ‘Waagnts and Cwaghas’ my father didn’t understand this as a type of food, but probably wondered if a gene mutation was surfacing after 4 years of somewhat normalcy. All I wanted was ‘ranch and crackers’ and wondered why my father couldn’t hear me, and I worried for his sanity. Also? only knowing how to say your 'j's like 'd's makes it very hard to yell to your mom a room is jammed and hot and really sweaty and I needed to go home, which came out as ‘dammed ahn haughnt ah wealley swea-hee ahn I neehee to go hoghem.’ (Note to future children: I will send you to resource if you talk like a moron. I don’t care if you  miss recess, you will not talk like a moron.)

Saving my mothers sanity, she sent me to preschool at the ghetto local community center for half the day where I begged for extra homework from miss Lisa and fell in love with the first dreamy boy I’d ever met. Matthew Frankenstein.  Yes, that was his real name. No he did not look like a green corpse, but had beautiful black hair and an adorable freckle on his cheek.(That was the beginning of pairing my first name with my love's last. My parents should have taken this as a forewarning and been prepared for my teenage dating years. Had I been able to write? All over my preschool drawings would have been doodles of ‘Nicole Frankenstein’ with little hearts dotting the I’s) OH how I swooned at him and how I strategically invited him into my fort to take him away from all the other desperate girls in my class for stolen romantic moments under the counter during play time.

A downfall of this new found love, was curiosity. Something I’m deeply ashamed of… I could not exactly figure out the difference between boys and girls. So naturally, I invited my darling Matthew into the bathroom with me to use to toilet next to me, so I could figure out why boys pee standing up, and why girls sit down. (the preschool toilets obviously didn’t value 4 year old privacy, so there were NO dividers in between the squat stations. Scary, but intriguing. I blame them for my curiosity). Matthew refused the offer telling me he didn’t need to go, and I think I was slightly relieved because I'm pretty sure my 4 year old self had to go #2. So, it took me until kindergarten to understand the difference between boys and girls, when Max Broun explained to me things I think I’ve blocked out of my memory.( All I remember from that day was him coming out of the bathroom and after our conversation, he ate a handful of chunky paste and I told on him) So, was it curiosity or a precursor to turning into a female pervert? I am ashamed.

Next up: The worst day of my 4 year old life.

valentines photo shoot

once upon a time, an adorable friend of mine named Raquel asked me to snap a few photos of her and her hub for their first valentines together...even though i dont quite know what i'm doing. but i think they turned out ADORBZ...don't you? (it didn't hurt that they are literally the most beaaauuuttiifullll couple ever)
:)