2019: Year in Review
I know it’s already almost February and I have been wanting to start blogging consistently. Anyways, I put together some highlights and photos of what 2019 looked like for me. I think these are always fun to get a big picture idea of what happened over this past year and this is a post I’ve been wanting to do just to simply better record my life.
January- February
January consisted of lots of skiing for Brandon and I. I also attended a photography business workshop called Hustle & Flow in Austin that has truly been transformative in my photography business. I photographed several military homecomings this month, so that was fun. It was also my first full couple of months coaching at the Crossfit gym!
March
Things started picking up in March with some more photography sessions and more coaching at the CrossFit gym. I also participated in the CrossFit Open, which is a series of weekly workouts released by CrossFit.com. Our gym would host Friday Night Lights and everyone would come in the evenings to take their shot at the workout. I did get my first bar muscle up during this Open so that was awesome.
My Mom also came to visit a few days of her spring break, so that meant some wedding planning was done by us!
April
I kicked off April with a weekend trip to Phoenix for a girl’s trip and also a very low key bachelorette weekend for me. I was so thankful to escape the cold of Colorado and to be in Phoenix with my best girl friends.
When I returned from Phoenix, Brandon and I closed on our first home! So we went through the whole moving process (moving out of a 3rd floor apartment is not fun). Our house is great, but has needed a lot of paint and carpet updates to make it feel like “our home”. At the end of April I went home for my wedding shower and it was so sweet and amazing! My Dad and brother-in-law were working on our wedding arch when I was home this weekend too.
May
The month of May was starting to pick up with weddings and sessions. My cousin graduated high school so I made a weekend trip home for that. I ended the month with the annual Murph workout at the CrossFit gym. By this time I was having pretty bad knee pain when running or squatting or jumping, so I did Murph, but biked and did box squats instead. Murph for me is always a marker for another year of CrossFit, and I’ve been at it for a little over 5 years now. So crazy! May included lots of wedding things and I had made a handful of trips to Denver to pick up my dress and get things altered.
June
June was a super stressful and busy month. My Mom came up to Colorado to help me knock out more wedding things before our wedding a few weeks later. For some reason I booked several sessions in the month of June (not a good idea the month you get married) and was also coaching a lot at the CrossFit gym. I remember the few weeks leading up to the wedding I legit felt like a crazy person. The few days leading up to the wedding were busy and kind of stressful, but once the wedding day (June 22) came the rest of the day was so, so good. I truly loved our wedding day and loved all the people who came to celebrate with us. You can check out photos from our wedding here.
July
I started off July with a trip to Jackson Hole, WY with Cassidy. Cassidy is a film photographer who I’m lucky enough to assist at lots of her weddings, and she ended up taking me with her to WY for a wedding. Jackson Hole is a gorgeous place!
The rest of the month was a normal work grind month with balancing working at the gym and weddings/sessions on the weekends.
August
In August I went home to photograph a wedding and I always love when work takes me back home. My Mom also came back to Colorado with me to help knock out more house work before she got started back to school. We got more painting and decorating done. I had another wedding in Colorado of my own and second shot weddings on the weekends too. And I was feeling simply super happy in my body and with my training and nutrition, so that’s always worth celebrating.
September
September kicked off with a girl’s bachelorette trip to Las Vegas! Vegas is always a fun and wild time, like everyone probably says . I loved getting to experience Vegas with my girlfriends for a third time! We still spent most of our money on food and alcohol. Maybe one day I’ll go to Vegas and actually go to a show instead of clubs or pool parties.
Once again the rest of September was filled with weddings. 3 of my own and then second shooting for others too.
October
The bachelorette trip in September was to celebrate my friend Jaci, who got married in October. J got married in Angel Fire, NM, so Brandon and I made the trip to Angel Fire for the wedding. Our group of friends stayed in a gorgeous Airbnb there and had a great weekend! You can look back on my Oct. blog post.
The Monday after we got back from Angel Fire, Brandon and I left for our honeymoon to St. Lucia! I’m still planning to do a whole post about our honeymoon because it truly was one of the best trips of our lives and we loved it! Since then we’ve talked about it and it almost feels like a dream that we’re not even sure was real life.
November
November consisted of more travel for me. I flew to California to photograph the wedding of one of my Zeta sisters. I got to spend a few extra days in California in Newport Beach and L.A. I also set up a few other photos shoot there. I did get an entire day to myself to explore L.A. and made it to The Broad museum (picture of me in the Infinity Mirrored Room) and the Griffith Observatory.
My last wedding of the year happened to be in New Mexico, so I drove home and photographed that wedding. Brandon and I hit the slopes in November as well and it was awesome of course. Then we drove back home to New Mexico for Thanksgiving weekend.
December
December started off with another trip. I flew to Orlando for a photography business workshop with Hustle & Flow to get reset and in a new direction for 2020. This really was a work trip, not a vacation at all. I finished the rest of my editing for the year and spent a lot of time working at the gym. We had our annual gym Christmas party. Brandon and I had our first married Christmas together to figure out. We ended up making a super quick trip home to Clovis for Christmas with my family. One of the pictures below has me holding this 1960s Nancy Drew board game that my Mom got me which was really special (I used to be a Nancy Drew nerd haha). We came back to Colorado and flew to Atlanta the next day to spend Christmas there with Brandon’s family. We were there for a week and had some down time with his family. The weather was perfect there and we got in several long walks down a beautiful road with gorgeous homes. Once we returned from Atlanta, we went to the mountains to ski for New Years. We skiied at Keystone and Vail, and it was nothing short of amazing of course!
That basically wraps up my year of 2019. It was a really, really good year. It was my first full year doing wedding photography full-time. Evidently I didn’t use like any photos from or of any of my work, and that’s because I stare at that stuff all day and it has it’s own website & Instagram feed. I won’t make any promises for when or what I’ll post next. I’m hoping to get back into general blogging about my life and to also do several posts focused on working out and nutrition. Thanks for taking the time to read or skim through this! 🙂