Watercoloring These Days
In August I followed a drawing book and did one drawing lesson a day for 30 days. I would sit down and just draw for half an hour to an hour when my two boys napped. If you know me, you’d know how much I love a good nap. However, spending a little time on drawing was very calming and soothing—more so than taking a long nap. I didn’t have a plan in place for September so often in the afternoon, I’d be just working on my to-do list items. It was still good to complete my other errands but I just felt that I was missing something.
There came the Mesa Art Center Snail Mail Creative Catalysts Project and I thought it would be nice to try a small watercolor piece as my contribution. I did two in one day and I had so much fun. I hadn’t done watercoloring for a while so I thought, there gotta be some kind of short daily lesson books on watercoloring and it might be fun to do watercoloring this month.
So I found this book 15-Minute Watercolor Masterpieces: Create Frame-Worthy Art in Just a Few Simple Steps by Anna Koliadych. Perfect! I’m just gonna follow along. There are more than 30 lessons in the book so it will take me more than a month to finish the book but I’m ok with that. Who knows if I will fall in love with watercolor afterwards and just keep going for a while.
Maybe it’s because I don’t think I am an expert on painting or drawing at all—I just cannot draw human faces well somehow—I feel much more free to draw and paint. I’m just enjoying the process and when the end result is not as good as I expected, I can easily say—ooops, that didn’t work—and quickly move on.
I definitely need to do this with my photos these days. The better I got, the more I want for myself and I quiet often forget to just have fun and create for myself. Who cares? Right? Especially that I am taking photos for my family, I’m pretty sure that they wouldn’t come back at me after decades to question me why I missed that one shot somewhere or my photos were not as perfect.
Anyways, so here are my watercoloring stuff these days.
"You know you can just say Thank You, right?"
I feel that I have gotten to know some really cool people lately and they are such big inspirations to me. I wanted to just go and tell each of these people how much I admire them and how much I appreciate them being an inspiration to me and just how cool of a human being they are. However, this insecure me held me back. What if they find me weird for wanting to reach out and just say thank you?! Would it be just embarrassing if they totally ignore me because they’ve heard enough praises or because the recognition from someone not so important at all like me means nothing to them at their level? Would I scare them off because they would be afraid that I’m trying to get something from them by saying all these compliments? Would they feel that I am just flattery? This list can probably go on and on.
As part of my grand attempt to understand myself, I too have been thinking about why I think like this. Am I alone in this or is this more common than I think it is?
I think this has something to do with me not being able to accept complements well too. Maybe it’s because I was taught that there is always someone better so anything that potentially makes you prideful is bad. Maybe it’s this Chinese tradition of always showing that you are humble that makes people feel like they are doing something wrong if they acknowledge their own hard-work. Woah, I just realized that as I am writing, this might even be part of the whole idea of each individual is only paying his due diligence for the big goal of the nation—don’t ever take credit for individual efforts.
Anyways. I had to learn to accept compliments. I vividly remember when I first came to the US and people would just come to me at the bus stop on campus and compliment on my shoes or ear-rings and I would blush and freeze without words in reply. Whenever someone excitedly came to me to tell me how good I was at something—that food you cooked tastes so good or that doodle you did was so cute or really literally anything—my response was always: Nah, I’m ok and I could be better.
Then Jonny totally called me out—You know you can just say Thank You, right?
I didn’t know that! How dare I just smile and say Thank You?!
Well, now, I know.
While I was still struggling with whether I should just go tell these people I don’t know well how much they inspire me, I got a message from a friend of mine telling me that I am such an inspiration to her and I am such a cool human!
Well, I don’t think I ever had anyone telling me that I am cool. (That might not be totally true since I think Jonny has told me that I am cool before, once at least. ) I’ve always tried to be cool but always ended up feeling awkward and not fitting in with any of the cool kids. I have to say that hearing someone calling me a cool person made my day. It was not coming from anyone with authority but just from this good friend I care about. It actually meant more than me ever wining any awards. I guess I might actually be kinda cool in some weird ways.
It was not an easy adjustment to feel comfortable about compliments but these days, I do find myself willingly saying Thank You more when someone complimented me. Another good thing is that, I feel more comfortable giving out my compliments too, gradually, but I’m getting there. I now definitely feel that it is possible to have this genuine desire to just say a simple Thank You for being awesome without any other string attached. The single action of showing my appreciation makes me happier myself and that would be enough. At the same time, others can also share with me these simple genuine appreciations for what I have done so why not just happily accept them and feel proud?
Thank you for saying thank you to me. Thank you for letting me say Thank You to you!
Digital Declutter Experiment Report
Jonny was reading this book called Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport and he decided to do this crazy digital declutter experiment for the month of July. Always having crazy ideas and always trying to live a minimalist life, Jonny has suggested many different ways that I could change to live a happier life. First Marie Kondo, now this digital minimalism. To say that I was skeptical was an understatement. In my mind, I was definitely defending my digital life—
You are the one who’s always watching stuff. Of course it would be easy for you since you don’t run a small business. I didn’t spend that much time on social media and my phone, it was all scraps of time. If I don’t chat with people on social media then I won’t have any adult conversation especially now during the pandemic. Don’t try to solve my problem, I’m an adult. My phone is my way of escape from toddler tantrums—you can walk away to your office but I can’t!
I mean I liked the fact that Jonny is now much more present in our life. Would that be enough for me to change myself? Not yet at least. But at least, I agreed to check out the book myself and see what it’s about.
Fast forward to the end of July. I finished the book and thought that YES! I have definitely become a slave to my phone and the whole digital world. What is worse is that my mental health has been hugely affected by the way I use digital devices and resources. Especially at the end of July, with COVID still raging here in Arizona and nobody seemed to care and everyone started to question the legitimacy of this virus while my family has pretty much gone back to normal life in Wuhan, I was just straight angry. I was angry at everyone—myself, the kids, Jonny and of course everyone on Facebook. Since I knew that I wouldn’t want to be glued to my phone during the day, the only time I thought I’d check my Facebook was the first thing in the morning and I could put away the phone for the rest of the day. So smart! Of course, 100% sure that I’d come across a comment on someone’s thread that would totally fire me up. Then guaranteed, I walked into the day being angry and I had this negative thing in my head that I would have to constantly try to make sense of. Honestly, I was just so done with the way I was.
So I told Jonny, I would do the experiment starting on August 1st. As much as I hated the way I was acting, I was still not willing to just give up my phone right away. Ouch. By July 31st, I clearly remembered me telling Jonny after I wasted an hour on a meaningless argument on Facebook—
I am so done with social media and I am SO READY to start the digital decluttering.
Here are the things I decided to do as my digital decluttering guidelines:
No Social Media!!
Wechat—Check Family Group Once at 5pm
Check Email Twice A Day—9:15am and 8:00pm
Check Text Message Twice A Day—with email
Work Time—9-10pm on photos, assignments(I was doing an intense photography workshop)
Call People to Say Hi.
It might be surprising but the whole point of the digital minimalism is not anti-social or anti-technology. It’s actually trying to help us to build stronger real connections. It sounds heartless but it is so true that a “like” on social media is literally just one byte of information and it doesn’t mean much at all. Actually, I am definitely guilty of just liking someone’s post in fear that I would offend the person if I don’t “like“ as all the others do even though I honestly couldn’t care less about this person’s personal business.
Anyways, I outlined my rules and off social media I went, without announcing my departure. This is not a short break, or at least I hope, that it could lead to some more permanent changes. Also I was just curious to know who really cared enough to notice that I was gone.
During August, I decided that I needed to make sure that I actually call and chat with people. Being stuck with three kids at home is not the best way to fulfill my forever urge to have a good deep mind burning conversation. So instead of scrolling through FB feed or instagram, I scrolled through my phone contacts. I called people—at least someone every few days. Some days, I called multiple people. I have to say, it was SO nice to be able to hear people’s voices. I chatted with people about many different things, parenting, church, schooling, relationships, and even racism and politics. I learned a lot from others and I feel like heard too. Literally.
Of course, by doing this, I subjected myself to the cruel fact that I would find out who truly are my friends and how many friends I have. Sadly, there was one day, I made like 20 calls and left each of them a voicemail and no one answered and no one cared enough to give me a call back. I mean, I didn’t try too hard to try and call again and I know that people are busy. And these days people just feel that you are selling MLM if all a sudden you are calling people so they avoid random calls. But still, it says something doesn’t it?
So thank you so much for the people who actually picked up my phone call and chatted with me or took the initiative to call me. It means so much to me. You probably have no idea how much I appreciated that phone call.
I know there would be hard days when I would want to just escape the whining and I would be attempted to reach for my phone. Or if I get bored then I would want to reach for my phone for a pacifier. I decided to read more books and also start this drawing lesson. I read way more books in this one month than the total amount of books I read in the entire 2019, or even plus 2018. I also followed this book called You Can Draw In 30 Days given to me as a gift earlier this year. I did one lesson a day for 30 days. I obviously have not become this expert drawer/painter but I absolutely enjoyed sitting there and sketching and shading and see all the lines and shapes come into something real. Oh, I did it during my boys’ nap time. It was my quiet time and I enjoyed it a lot.
I also tried to just go out to areas where I don’t have much signal at all. I took the kids to the Salt River a couple of times and we saw wild horses. Of course, the kids loved the sand and sticks more than the horses but it was good enough for me to get some peaceful time out with no one around.
Of course, one major thing I did…was to use an app to block my applications and websites on my computer and on my phone. I know how my will power is. I needed something stronger to help me to start with and hopefully I can get into a good habit. I deleted the social media apps on my phone and turned off all notifications. The fact that it is an extreme hassle for me to get on any of these distractive stuff has helped me to not wanting to get on my phone or my computer much anyways. There’s nothing wrong with some tough love for myself right?
Now, I found this month a lot easier than I expected. I think one major advantage I had was that I was taking this amazing photography workshop(Visual Rhetoric by Courtney Larson). This is probably one of the best things I’ve ever done. It was kinda like the Self-reliance class I did a few years ago too. You get to interact with the teacher, and the workshop attendees. You work toward the same goal together and there are assignments to hold you accountable. The best thing, we get to do live chat each week. Especially under our crazy circumstance of this pandemic, being able to see the same awesome people every week and chat about the things we love is just a pure blessing. I don’t know how exactly I can make this sustainable in the future—obviously I can’t be taking workshop after workshop every month. Or can I? Well, I might have been doing this for the following months of this year, ooops. But no regret. So eventually I think I will need to find out a good way to just keep in touch with the new friends I made during these workshops and we will have our own private zoom parties maybe. Or really, hopefully we can get out of this pandemic soon so I can actually go hangout with people in person.
Obviously, life with three kids will be crazy. Period. But honestly I felt peaceful. I felt content. I felt inspired. I felt good. I definitely wonder now, how much I need to know about the world around me. It’s a hard balance to find between focusing on my own stuff and not to be ignorantly full of myself in my head. It will still take me major efforts to be a good friend and find good friends but I think it will be worth the effort to find true friendships. And the most important thing is that now I know I can gain back the control over my life—digital, social and any life. That is the most freeing and comforting gain from this experiment.
Especially now that we are still dealing with all the political stuff around us and this COVID crisis and everyone is just yelling at each other, I feel more in need of peace and control in my life than ever. While I might not know the latest data on covid anymore, I feel safe because I know enough.
So if you need to find me, just call me. And if you get a call from me all a sudden, I promise that I am not trying to lure you into any MLM schemes. I just haven’t been on social media and I want to say hi and catch up.
October updates:
So in September, I got back on FB and Instagram. Honestly, I didn’t miss much. None of the things I missed would have changed my course of life, not even for that day. With me still running a business and trying to find my community, I felt like I had to share more content to be seen. I definitely fell short on the calling and chatting with people. And like I expected, I felt a lot more anxious than in August. I would go and check if people had interacted with my content or if people had replied my messages. I did not like it.
So now, I’m dialing back again. Gotta enforce it while it was still hot and fresh. I haven’t found myself caring too much about Facebook. So I actually will just unfollow everyone on Facebook except our church facebook group and our neighborhood group and my Fit4Mom group. I probably will just check my facebook once a week if not once a month now. I will move here to the website totally for my updates and I will continue to make an effort to reach out to the important people in my life through other ways—email, phone calls and maybe even letters(give me any excuse to use my fountain pen, haha.)
Instagram, I still don’t know. I don’t even know why I care but I do. So I’ll have to figure this one out. My justification is that photography is a visual art and it’s just easy to see people’s work at one place these days. But maybe there is a better way that I am not aware of. Not totally true because I could just go and be on the ClickPro Daily Project Page. Maybe I’ll just move over there? I don’t know. So stay tuned for my decision about instagram. If you care at all.
Pour Some Creativity Juice | Photo Fantastico Contest Experience | Arizona Documentary Family Photographer
Have you ever thought what you could achieve with 48 hours from start to finish? I remember that rush of adrenaline when I was a student working on my final paper and the deadline is fast approaching and I barely made it by a hair. Well, I normally wouldn’t recommend this approach to any student. However, after being stuck at home since January, I think some healthy dose of this kind of thrill is much needed by now. Conveniently, I stumbled upon this photography called Photo Fantastico three days before the contest started. I immediately signed up.
Unleash your most creative self in a contest unlike any other!
*Create 5 images in 2 days.
*Compete with photographers from across the globe
* Win prizes
*Be forced to create an incredibly creative photo collection!
Here came July 20th 10am, I hopped off my workout zoom call right into the clue(prompt) reveal party zoom call. Maybe it was the exercise or maybe it was that excitement for this unusual new contest I’m about to participate in, my heart was definitely beating fast. And we got our 5 clues:
Highs and Lows
Street Scene
AM/PM
Unexpected Visitor
How Fabulous!
Now I’ve got 48 hours to come up with 5 images that go along with these clues and are coherent within the set. Well, technically, 55 hours but with my kids nap schedules and buffering time for uploading my submission, I decided that I better have something ready within 48 hours. So it began!
First I started to brainstorm under each clue and see what it means. Perhaps the fact that it’s the first clue, I spent a lot of time on the pair Highs and Lows. It can be literal. It can be figurative. I have recently done a challenge with flying a kite; I’m working on a home project to document our pretty unique life and living situation; I am constantly trying to just tell my story as a mother of three young kids. These were my first reaction and I started to try to expand along these lines hoping to find a good cohesive line of story for the rest of the prompts. However, I couldn’t make sense out of these separate tidbits. I thought to myself, it would definitely be easier if I could first write a story and then break up the scenes into five segments.
A couple of hours had passed and I need to start to make some lunch for the kids. First change of course. I’ve never felt more inadequate in storytelling than this moment. I wish I had finished the Masterclass on creative writing and storytelling. Do I have time to go and finish the second half of that class now? Probably not. Precious time!! While lunch was in the making, my brain was definitely not in the kitchen. Surprisingly I did not burn any food. Haha. During nap time, I started to google “how to write a short story“ and “how to write micro stories“. Honestly, the more I read other people’s short stories, the more inadequate I felt in story writing. I started to listen to songs and musics hoping to find inspirations. I texted the clues to my mother-in-law and told her to come up with a poem or a short story with it and hoped that I could possibly use her creation as inspiration or at least for my other personal project. I also gave the five clues to my daughter and asked her to draw stories for the different clues.
I realized that she used each prompt to create an individual story but as a whole, these stories were cohesively her. Funny, imaginary and full of love. I recorded my daughter telling me all these stories actually. I gave it a thought that maybe, I could also have a series of stories that are not related but all with the same theme? Quickly I gave up on that idea because it was too much work for too little time. Maybe it will be a fun project on my own for the future to create a series of stories based on my daughters’ drawings. But I did come up with another idea—are there any kids’ short stories or micro stories? Then I stumbled upon this pot of gold:
The Lost Balloon
by Evaleen Stein
O dear! my purple toy balloon
Has flown away! and very soon
It will be high up as the moon!
And don't you think the man up there
Will wonder what it is, and stare?
Perhaps hell say, "Well, I declare!"
Or, maybe if it chance there are
Some little boys in yonder star,
And if it floats away so far,
Perhaps they'll jump up very high
And catch the cord as it goes by!
At any rate I hope they'll try!
This is a poem called The Lost Balloon by Evaleen Stein, a not so famous American female poet, included in the book Child Songs of Cheer published in August 1918. Well, with it being almost August and us being in a pandemic, I immediately felt drawn to the fact that there is this book called Child Songs of Cheer published back then. I looked up the book but there isn’t much information on the background information on either the book or the poet. I also found it rather interesting that the ratings on Evaleen’s works are not that great, according to goodreads at least. Nonetheless, after a century, I found this poem and was inspired by it. My kids enjoyed this poem along with her other works in the collection. On a side note, my husband and I have been talking about how everything is entertaining these days including books. We have been wondering what books from a hundred years ago looked like and how kids were reading/listening to stories back then without the constant screen time stimulation. Anyways, this one little poem just spoke to me on so many levels.
I decided to tell a story that’s adapted from this old poem with a spin of my kids current favorite made-up story of Bob the Alien. So I sketched up my plots and ordered my balloons.
My ideas: 1. Highs and Lows—balloons are flying highs and lows and that’s how much my kids love their toy balloons. 2. Street Scene—My girl lost her balloon so she’s chasing her balloon in the street. 3. AM/PM—the balloon got caught in a big tree and my girl will go look at it in the morning and at night.(Cue—my attempt to do an awesome astrophotography shot for the PM with balloon still stuck in the tree.) 4. Unexpected Visitor—Of course the comet! 5. How Fabulous—Bob the Alien turned the balloon into a star and brought it back! I had two evening gold hours, two mornings, and two nights to get all these shots in.
We have been having unusual cloudy days this week somehow and of course on the days of this contest, we didn’t have my favorite golden hour sunsets pretty much at all. My kids were already in bed but I peeked through the window and saw that slice of golden light shining, I grabbed my girl out of bed and did a few shots. She was not that thrilled because she was just about to get to this exciting part in the story Dad was reading. I was not feeling too happy about the images because we were losing light fast. So I called it good and send my girl back to bed and decided to give it a try to hopefully get a shot of the comet somehow through the clouds.
I climbed up to our roof for the first time. I had my phone out trying to locate the stars behind the clouds. Then I laid down and just stared at the sky for a long while, by myself. It was quiet. I still had all these thoughts rambling through my head but it was a nice quiet time without interruption from anyone or any devices. Eventually I just gave up because there were just too many clouds and I couldn’t see any stars. I probably should have just taken the long drive out of the city but oh well. I had a headache anyways so let’s just get some rest and we will have a busy day ahead of us.
I woke up late because of the headache I had the night before so as soon as I woke up, I jumped right in to shooting.
These were pretty good images to show that the kids were having fun with their balloons and they took the balloons everywhere they went. They were pretending that it were their birthday. However, it was not as good as I wanted the image to be. So I kept shooting. Gotta work hard and it’s totally ok to have a lot of not so good photos to get THE shot.
I was hungry. I was hot. Can you even imagine how much the kids were whining at this point? Yeah, we better get the kids some breakfast. I asked my husband to take a behind the scene photo of me taking photos and when I saw that photo, I had a new idea. (Btw, Creative editing and Photoshop are allowed in the contest but you just have to use the materials created within the contest time frame.)
Kids were fed so I got them out of the house again. To give them a break I just let them play in the backyard while I climbed onto the roof again. Man, it was not a good idea to climb up to the roof in Arizona in the middle of the day without wearing gloves or thick pants or good shoes or sunscreen. I was just burning. But again, it is just an amazing view from up high to watch my little kids running around. Yeah, now I started to regret that I did not get the drone I wanted. Oh well, climbing up to the roof is not that bad after all because I found a new angle.
Then I thought, hey, how about shooting from this angle with my girl looking at the balloon stuck in a big tree. I tied up a balloon in the tree and then asked(more like yelled at) my girl to go over to the tree and look at the balloon up there and I’ll just take one last photo and they can go back into the air-conditioned house instead of being baked in the scorching Arizona sunlight.
My girl was rather upset that she had to do one more photo so she did not want to look up to the balloon and literally just walked away back inside right after I got this shot.
But I knew that I just got THE shot.
Now, good thing is that I got the shot. Bad news—I knew that this would be the shot for the prompt of Highs and Lows as the opening of a story. With an opening strong, I felt that I had to keep the story more interesting to have a good climax. The balloon is already in the tree so how do I get a street scene? It doesn’t make sense to chase a balloon anymore. Maybe someone peeking from the street and saw my kids trying to get the balloon but couldn’t reach it?
I tried my Gopro but it was too wide. It was a nice looking view with my long lens…Well I would need to set up my camera in the street and use a remote to trigger it and duck down behind the fence to send my kids up a ladder trying to get the balloon. But then what about my AM/PM?! Nah. Not gonna work.
With lunch time fast approaching and me still running around our house covered by sweat, kids happily got promised with happy meals for lunch. Thank you nice sister from our church for sending my kids their birthday McDonald giftcards. Then I thought, hey, it would be cool to create a scene where my kids saw the balloon store and wanted a balloon but wish not granted! So we drove to the party city store and parked at different spots in front of the store with double blinker on and I took some photos. The we rushed back home. Well, I did take one more stop to get my kids each a frappuccino as a little reward on top of their happy meals. There is no shame to bribe my kids for photos. Haha.
In order to make sure that my story is actually smooth and I would not exceed the word count limit for the write up, I spent some time to actually write down my story that I was trying to tell:
“Hold the string, otherwise...” Lolo’s loud grunt cut off mom’s sentence. Lolo barely stepped into the backyard. Immediately her head dropped. Frozen for a few seconds, she then said,”It’s too hot. I’m going back inside.” After picking up lunch, Lolo rapidly tapped her right hand on the window.“There Mom! Only two dollars! Please!” Mom actually flipped the turn signal! She changed to the left lane and turned up the radio. “Can a red round balloon still turn into a star?” Lolo asked. Finishing up Lolo’s favorite impromptu bedtime story of Bob the Alien, Dad said, “perhaps Bob would catch the balloon when it passes by and check for you.” The next morning at only 5:30am, Mom woke up to Lolo’s loud squeal:”Look Bob came!” In the backyard mom saw Lolo dancing, with a gold star balloon. How fabulous!
I got the closing shots and sent the kids to bed. Now the last shot would be the comet shot to represent Bob the Alien’s unexpected visit. I climbed up onto the roof again. Now, we are still having cloudy days but we had a little clearer sky throughout the day so I thought that I could at least get something—maybe just some stars if not the comet. I mean, our neighborhood is actually relatively dark at night and we could have seen a lot of stars on a summer night. However, the luck was not on my side.
Now my awesome astrophotography shots were not happening for sure.What do I do? I thought. While lying on our hot roof, I thought that I could choose to indicate that an unexpected visitor, like a friend, came to deliver some goodies at the door including a new balloon. But that was just too cheesy of a story and just in a lack of some childish magic. It was getting late. I had to go to bed and get some sleep before my baby gets up in the middle of the night. Then I thought, what if I create a comet in my photo somehow? I tried to create a comet with flying by airplanes. Then it hit me…What if I just use my phone flashlight to do light paint somehow? So there I was, late at night standing on top of my roof alone trying to create a comet illusion with my phone flashing at different angles. Soon enough, there was a helicopter circling around the neighborhood with a beam down. It didn’t catch me in the spot light though, so maybe it was just searching for a criminal I thought.
I’ve got the raw images and I still have to edit them. I wanted to reflect that nostalgia feeling in my series since I was originally inspired by a poem from 1918. Also I wanted to make it less technical—meaning less showing how good a photographer I am as in parallel to the fact that Evaleen was not that famous or good of a poet back then but still the work made an impact because of the content rather than the technics. I had my series done for proofing at 2am, 15 hours before deadline. In the morning, I printed the 5 images out and pinned them to the wall to actually look at them in the old fashion way. Then I made some adjustments on the tones in some of the images and was happy about my collection. I submitted the collection a few hours before the deadline.
I told my husband the night after I submitted my entry:
Man that was hard. But it was really fun!
Looking at submissions from previous years, I was not expecting to win anything. This whole contest was mostly to push myself a little further on my creative journey. At the same time, it was just a good clean fun thing to do for myself when I have been stuck with kids 24/7 for six months now.
The judging and award ceremony was live on a zoom call the next day. That’s the thrill! Since I was not expecting to win, I was muted without video showing. I was putting my baby to take a nap when I was watching the submission collection slideshow. There were some real AH-mazing sets! By the end of the slideshow, I was ready to give my applauses to the winners and try harder next time. HOWEVER, guess what, they announced the first Best-of-Prompt winner for Highs and Lows and there I saw my name. WHAT?! I definitely did not expect that. I had to scramble to put my baby down in bed, unmute myself and turn on the video when they were trying to find out if I were there. That was actually really cool and unexpected that I actually won. It was really nice to hear what the judges had to say about what they liked my image and I thought that I successfully conveyed my message there. It was also VERY cool to be able to have my image in front of so many photographers I look up to. Honestly, I didn’t even remember what they said the prizes were since I was not expecting to win. The whole experience itself was worth the participation already and now that one of my images actually won, it was even better.
This is a super long post. I know I know! So if you have made it all the way through, wow, thank you!!!!
I really wanted to share my WHOLE experience as I went through this fun yet challenging creative process.
There are some very valuable things I took away from this process:
We are our own worst critiques so don’t be too hard on ourselves, especially as creatives. Or in life in general. We are probably better than we thought. Also, while we cannot please everyone out there, our work speaks to people in ways we might not even expect. Just like Evaleen Stein wasn’t that famous back in his days and she didn’t get extremely good ratings nowadays, her work still impacted me in a positive way. Hopefully I can just keep sharing my work and my thoughts, then one day my images or words might make an impact on someone’s life. That is good enough.
Creativity comes from outside but also more importantly from within. One thing I did NOT do during this process was to look at other people’s photos for inspiration. I wanted my photos to be totally mine. You can get inspirations from a lot of different places rather than someone else’ existing images and try to replicate. I read a quote once: “Inspirations are for amateurs and for the rest of us, we just get to work.“ Don’t get me wrong, it is VERY important to study other amazing photographers’ work. However, it’s more important to actually just get to work. If I didn’t climb up onto the roof again during the day just trying to experiment from different angles, I would not have gotten the shot that won the award. Sometimes it is pure luck but I also do believe that hard work warrants better luck in the long run.
Find a good community. It was just amazing to see how supportive everyone was during this whole process. All the submissions are amazing one way or another. Some are stellar in technical aspects. Some are pure awesome stories. Some provoke strong emotions. Some bring smiles to my face. To me, we are all winners. And it is TRULY a good feeling to be able to recognize each other’s strength and be happy for one another. Yes, this is a competition, literally. However, I felt more strongly about community over competition through the process. If you feel like you don’t belong to any of the existing communities, then create your own. People likeminded will find your existence valuable.
If you think life is boring or you are stuck, just say yes to something crazy and give it a try. Or go find a personal project and work on it. Just go and do something about it, something. Don’t wait for a better opportunity. I actually signed up for a visual storytelling workshop that will start soon so if I had waited, technically speaking I would have been better prepared to win. I’m glad that I didn’t wait till the next round to start. These past few days have been one of the absolutely highlights of the year. Especially now that we are facing all the craziness in this world, this little project was a nice escape from my other problems even for just a little bit. I was refueled.
There is always room for improvement. It’s kinda funny that the more awards I’ve won, the more I feel that I’ve got long ways to go. It’s just super humbling when you compare your work against other brilliant works. I am getting better and better at critiques on my own work. I know this might sound contradictory from my first point, but I think it is a good thing to know how to critique my own work setting emotions and attachments aside, from a pure professional way. Even with my award winning image, I already feel that I could make it even stronger with some tweaks. It’s just exciting, to me at least, to know that I still could get so much better in the future.
A lot work goes into amazing results. The longer I’ve been taking photos, the more I know that it takes a whoooooooole lot of work to become a great photographer. There is no shortcut. There is no overnight fame and fortune like winning a lottery. If I am not where I want to be, I simply have to put in more hard work to get there. Guess what, along the way I will fail. Many many times. I will fail miserably at some point, then again and again. But it is OK. It’s all part of the journey and part of the learning. Then I am better than ever before.
Well, that’s what I have been doing these past couple of days. Thank you for listening to my ramblings and my thoughts.
If you are into photography and you want to get some creativity juice flowing, you definitely NEED to check out the Photo Fantastico Contest for their next run in November. Maybe we will compete together!
Let's Fly A Kite | Arizona Documentary Photographer
I’m doing this summer photo challenge and the prompt of the week is Flying A Kite. Well, first off, I’ve never been good at flying kites ever. Two, we don’t get much breeze here in Arizona—we either get nothing or haboob dust storms. With that being said though, what challenge would it be without it being challenging right? So let’s fly a kite!
But we don’t have a kite. So…let’s make a kite first. How hard can it be to make a kite, right?
Well, the steps are simple and clear but when kids are involved in the making, things don’t usually go as planned. And, yes, I’m blaming the kids. Ok ok, the actual fact is that, I might be crafty but I definitely don’t know how to make a kite. I helped the kids to tie their frames together and I immediately realized that the cross is not symmetric. Oh well.
Of course, my boy wanted to get his hands on the project too. He picked up his scissors and went directly for the thread that’s forming the frame. I was so close to screaming NOOOOOO! Somehow I calmed myself down and asked him what he thinks he needs to do to fix it. He actually came up with the idea that we could just tape it back. We tried it out and it worked ok. I mean, probably still affected how a kite can fly but at least we don’t have a broken kite for the moment. Lesson learned, just roll with it because the kite might never fly anyways.
My girl’s favorite part was probably making the tail for the kite. She mede the bows and tied them onto the string. While I was attaching the tail to the kite, she realized that she could blow on the bows and they would spin. How fun! Until…
The string got all tangled up. My girl said that we could just cut it off and then make a new tail. I was trying to teach her a lesson about being patient and trying to fix things before getting a new one. I spent the entire nap time trying to untangle these 8 bows and I gave up at the end. I was like, forget that. Why did I spend so much time on a kite that probably would never even fly?! I told the kids, hey, look, our kites probably would never fly but we are gonna still give them a try. Also, if somehow our kite did get up into the air, the string might break and the kite might fly away. We can always make new kites right?
Look at me, I am doing such a great job lowering the expectation for my kids so they wouldn’t throw a tantrum later when we actually try to fly a kite.
Surprise surprise, our kites, never got to fly! Ha! We tried and tried. Most likely it was because the frame was too heavy and it was not symmetric enough. However, the kids still had fun running around holding the kites and just watch the tangled tails fly in the air. And eventually it turned into a chasing game and see who can escape from daddy.
The attempt to fly a kite definitely failed but my kids still had a lot of fun. My girl told me that we could try again next time when there is a dust storm so we get stronger winds. She also told grandma later that the kite we made together was her favorite kite. Thanks kiddos.
Even though the kite spent most of the time surfing on our lawn dragged by my kids, it has been quite a fun experience. At least now I know I am not that good at making kites and we can joke about it. And regardless, my kids love me for spending the time working with them to attempt to make and fly a kite. That’s what matters the most, isn’t it?
A Celebration in Pandemic | Arizona Documentary Family Photographer
Covid-19 has been around for a couple of months now in the US and July 4th is now here. Independence Day celebrations had always been a fun part for me and for the kids. We usually had family and friends over at our place for a party and then we will have fireworks at the end of the day. This year, with the pandemic things are definitely different. So what do we do? We don’t want to just cancel everything in life but we also cannot risk having a little too much fun for the short moment and then causing long-term damages to our healths and family relationship. It’s never an easy decision when dealing with unprecedented situations.
We decided to skip the family dinner together since most of people in our extended family do not feel comfortable dining together and mingle in a closed space and it is still too hot to have everyone eat in the backyard. We would get together for fireworks later at night while social distancing.
This is what it looks like having a firework show during a pandemic.
We set up the chairs for each small family with great social distancing in between. Everyone is wearing a mask to protect the high risk parents. And we lit up the fireworks and watched from a far.
I was trying to figure out how I feel about this whole celebration in pandemic thing. Honestly, it was a pretty unsettling eerie feeling. We were together but we couldn’t even see what the people from across the lawn are doing. Our kids and their cousin are definitely excited to see fireworks, but they couldn’t really share the joy from so far apart especially when they are also wearing protective headphones.
At one point, some neighbors set off these huge fireworks. Then everyone was just watching the big firework while ignoring our little firework.
It happened to be full moon too. In Chinese culture whenever we see a full moon we think about reunion of the family. In a sense, we were indeed together as a family, but honestly, I felt the most apart and disconnected than ever. Maybe it’s just me. I need to have either physical connection or a good quality time to fill my cup. I wonder if this is the best way to stay connected. I wonder what we could do to make sure that we can meet the needs for human connections and a sense of union.
At least I know that my kids had fun and that would be enough for now. For the long run though, we gotta figure something out so a celebration can feel a little bit more like an actual celebration.
Life with Spina Bifida| Spina Bifida Awareness Day 2018
It is Spina Bifida Awareness Day today on October 25th. October seems to be the month of awareness, but to me, it is a special month to remember what life is like with Spina Bifida.
I don’t really talk about this with people other than close family or friends so many people probably are not aware that my daughter has a birth defect called Spina Bifida. There is a great article on “What is SB?“ on the Spina Bifida Association Website explaining the ins and outs of Spina Bifida you can check out if you have a few minutes.
I was 24 weeks pregnant and we were living in China. I just remember me being alone in the examine room while my husband was waiting outside in the lobby, hoping to poke the technician a little bit to find out if we are having a boy or a girl (it is actually illegal in China to reveal gender during pregnancy) and then was notified that I should wait in the hall way to get a second scan by another expert because there might be something going on. Ever since that morning, all I know is that we’ve read so many documents, seen so many different doctors and done all the possible tests during a pregnancy.
The Chinese doctor said that it did not look good. Our baby might not be able to ever stand up, or walk, or read, or live a normal life. “You guys are still young and you should try again.” the doctors recommended.”Oh and remember to take folic acid next time.”
They mean well. However, they just don’t have enough experience with cases like this. The good thing was that we have access to doctors from other areas in the world. We went to an Australian doctor in the city where we were and she helped us and referred us to multiple neurosurgeons around the world to get a further diagnosis and an action plan for us. And one of the neurosurgeons actually became my daughter’s actual doctor now, which is really cool to me.
What is Spina Bifida to us? My girl’s official diagnosis is Lipomyelomeningocele, a word I still can’t remember how to spell. It means that her spine was not closed during the initial forming stage and has an opening on her spinal tube. And because of the opening, her spinal cord instead of being dangling in the spinal tube, it was stuck on the inside lump of her back and was pulled out of the spinal tube. She has a bump on her back. Because of the spinal cord being attached to a fat lump and pulled, some nerves are damaged. She had surgery when she was 6 months old. We didn’t know what nerves were damaged exactly and we still don’t know how some of her nerve-functions will be(including being potty trained and being able to walk on super sharp rocks).
I don’t usually talk about her condition mostly because when you look at her, you would not have guessed that she has Spina Bifida. Quoting her grandpa: “ The only thing that’s not really normal with her is that she started speaking way too early.” I as a parent, don’t really want to make it a big deal. I don’t think she is disabled enough for me to go around and say that I’m a special need parent. I don’t think we’ve really suffered as much as some of my friends who have real challenging special needs children. At the same time, I don’t want people to always say, oh I’m so sorry that this happened to her after knowing about it. I don’t want people to ask me “did you take folic acid last time?“ because I surely did. I don’t want people to treat her differently because now they know she is actually sort of different.
However, I think it’s a good time to actually bring it up. Mostly for me. But also for my daughter. And probably for people who might not know about some of the special conditions that come with life.
For me, I just want to say to myself—you are a good mom. You did all you could have done and you made the right decision to bring her to this world. You were not selfish because you were afraid of the pain of abortion and it is always good to respect life.
For my girl, I just want to say to her—you are different, but we are all different, one way or another. Go live your life the way you want and don’t let others dictate your life. And go make friends with people who are different from you.
For other people who might be hearing about this for the first time—please don’t feel sorry for us and don’t put a tag on special need children. See beyond their disabilities and focus on what amazing things they could achieve.
I’ve tried to channel my inner sorrow and the dark little spot associated with this. (Oh, believe me, I’m not saying that it was not hard. ) But every time when I focus on the fact that I went through the craziest pregnancy as a first time mom and there are so many uncertainties ahead of us, I just feel really down. And I simply don’t like it. When I spend too much time worrying if she will ever be totally normal or if I am doing all I can to protect her future siblings from having the same trials in life, I see myself buried in doubt and fear. I simply don’t like it.
While it’s healthy to express feelings, which I’m definitely not very good at and am working on, I think it can also be a good idea to just focus on the good, the bright, the positive.
During that pregnancy, time seemed to be frozen at times and to be flying by at other times. The crazy pregnancy definitely prepared me for any possible pregnancy tests—blood test, MRI, amniotic fluid test—come what may and I will deal with it. It also brought me ever closer to God. It was a good lesson to learn to stop asking why and instead to ask how I can do this thing. It was awesome to be able to get closer to family as well. It definitely helped my little family to hold together because it was seemingly us against world at some point. It was also really heart warming to really see how much my family cared about me even though their way of saying love at first was slightly different from how I wanted.
I’ll have to say that it was really cool when my girl beat all the odds and started crawling before her surgery. And then see her stood up by herself. Then see her running through rock piles. Then see her getting potty trained(mostly). And of course, it is just cool to hear her talk like a champion in both Chinese and English. I try not to be too prideful and brag too much but it is really the best thing to see your baby grow and be strong. It is also a great confirmation to me that I made the right decision back then to keep going.
Having a kid who needs special medical attention is also a very humbling experience for me. It reminds me that we all have weaknesses and how little we know. I have to trust her medical team. It’s also a great opportunity for me to practice my patience. I can remind myself that she might never be able to do certain things as fast even though she could speak faster than I could sometimes. It has also helped me to not taken things for granted and also to not over think. Not saying that I absolutely don’t actively parent all her behaviors, but I sometimes do look at her and say, hey, this might be just a three years old being a three years old, or there might be actually something going on developmentally in her brain and we will figure it out in its due time.
So, if you are friends of mine. Yup, that happened. And we are glad to have our perfect little girl in our lives.
If you are pregnant and are struggling with a diagnosis of a birth defect—you are not alone! There are amazing communities out there. Talk to other people who have gone through similar situations. No matter which country you are in, there is help and hope. And I’m here if you ever need someone to talk to :)
If you are a new mom or a woman who is thinking about getting pregnant but is scared of things going wrong during pregnancy—It’s totally normal. I had this gut feeling before I found out about it actually and I sometimes think if I actually jinxed it. But it’s also ok to just let go and go for it. Things happen and that is just part of life. Embrace the uncertainty and it can be an empowering experience if you let it to be that way.
If you are someone who just learned a new word today. Yay! You are better than I was. I didn’t know until I saw it on my ultrasound paper. Good for you!
There are so much I could say about life with Spina Bifida but I don’t think there is any better way of showing what life is like than living it!
So here is my little girl who has Spina Bifida and also someone who is extremely talented with language, who is absolutely creative, who is definitely full of life. And now, hopefully, you are aware that there is a birth defect called Spina Bifida and it does not define the capacity of someone’s life!
Thank you for reading! <3
A Glamorized Childhood | Payson Arizona Childhood Photography| Mesa Family Photographer
There has been some big controversy in the photography world lately. This whole situation with childhood made me think really hard.
As adults, we look back to our childhood and all kinds of memories come up-- the sweet ones and the nightmares. It's healthy to face both and to recognize both. Growth comes after pain and acknowledging pain is half of the work to success. Don't deny your past. Don't try and hide your childhood.
With that being said though, when it's our time to teach our children, it's our responsibility as adults to choose which part of childhood to focus on.
I always feel that there is enough sadness and negativity in this world so I would prefer to focus on the bright side. Have those bright little joyful moments be my light. To remind me that there is goodness in the world. There is hope.
As an artist or public figure, we have the blessing to be in front of so many people each day, including so many children. We can create something to speak to people's hearts. However, with great blessing comes great responsibility. We need to choose wisely. What we create. What we focus on. What we glamorize.
"Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." Proverbs 22:6
If I ever get to glamorize childhood, I would love to glamorize the simple joy we feel as little children. That magic of being a child. Childhood needs to be celebrated instead of being rushed through.
My kids don't usually dress up even though they may very well be the cutest kids when they do dress up. I don't want to go through the hassle of cleaning their nice outfits. I don't want them to focus on their appearance too much. I don't need to spend too much money on things that don't really matter. However, this week, I decided to have my girl in this really nice brand new outfit and went on our trip up north to Payson into the woods. Why? Just because.
Just because I want to show that dancing in the woods is cool. Kicking dirt and jumping off a little tree trunk is fun. Finding a huge pinecone the size of your face is absolutely amazing. These are the things kids should be doing. And this is what we need to celebrate and glamorize. These are appropriate for little children.
I may not be the most experienced photographer. I may not be someone who can stir the whole industry. However, I do hope that I can make tiny waves in little girls' hearts when they look back at the photos and think to themselves look, that was me. I was beautiful and I had fun as a kid. That, is enough to me. That, is glamorous to me.
As always, thank you for reading. Enjoy our little girl having fun in the woods for the very first time.
Breastfeeding Awareness Week Motherhood Session | Mesa Lifestyle Family Photographer
I found out a while ago that World Breastfeeding Week is celebrated August 1-7 each year encourage breastfeeding and improve the health of babies around the world.
I was visiting with some of my family members the other day. My son came to me being cranky so I picked him up and nursed him while keep chatting. My mother-in-law who was sitting across the living room looked a little surprised. I nodded and said--yeah, I'm still nursing him. Then us three moms had a great conversation about our breastfeeding journeys.
"Breastfeeding--Foundation of Life"
We hear about breastfeeding a lot. We hear that it's great for babies. We hear that it's amazing how female body works. We hear that we should encourage breastfeeding. But there's actually so much more we don't talk about. Breastfeeding means differently for each mom but ultimately, breastfeeding becomes part of the story of motherhood. The good, the bad, the pretty, the ugly. All honest and raw.
I'm Amy. I'm a breastfeeding Mom.
When I was pregnant with my girl, we were living in China, where every mom seems to be feeding babies formula because mom needs to go back to work after the maternity leave. I remember all too well standing in front of shelves of formula in the store, feeling extremely anxious--the formula is expensive; the bottles are expensive; I don't know what kind would be the best. With my girl having a birth defect, after being scared by the recommendation of termination of the pregnancy, we were also preparing to need to save millions of dollars for her medical expenses. All these preparation for motherhood is just stressful. Luckily, I have my husband. He firmly told me--you will do fine. You will breastfeed. We will be just fine! We won't need to buy formula or bottles. Our girl will be alright. So I was determined that I'm not going to buy bottles. I'm going to breastfeed.
Due to my girl's birth defect, she was taken to NICU right away. The nurse was really nice to let me kiss my girl before she was wrapped up and sent to a different floor. In China, parents are not allowed to be in the NICU. Technically speaking, you can go talk to the nurse about your child's situation every afternoon at 3pm. So I took a nap and started to try and pump some milk preparing for breastfeeding when my girl could come back. It's the weirdest feeling--I just had a baby but my baby was not with me but I was pumping milk.
After 10 hours, my husband being an American, said "this is ridiculous. I am going to go get her back!" So there he went. A tall Mandarin-speaking white guy went alone to NICU and got our baby girl back magically. My baby girl was picked up by her daddy and put in my arm. She wanted to nurse right away. My baby girl nursed for the first time 10 hours after she was born. That was the longest 10 hours in my life. Holding her in my arms and feeling her little mouth connected to me made me realize that she is alive, perfectly alive. I didn't lose her. I'm sustaining her life. And I'm now a mom.
So here began my breastfeeding journey.
You would probably think that with such a strong motivation and connection, breastfeeding would be a piece of cake for me. Oh no. Oh no.
With stitches, it took me at least a month before I could sit comfortably let alone holding a baby. But if I lie down and nurse, I couldn't see how she latched and I wasn't able to get a good feeding. Because she was not latched very well, she was sucking extremely hard and I was bleeding like crazy on my nipples. For the first month and half, I was feeling pain after pain after pain all over the places but I was on a new-mom high so I carried through. My mom helped us for the first 2 weeks and my husband was working at home so it was really helpful that I was able to feed the baby and then run to the farmers market without worrying about my baby and come back just in time to feed her again.
Then, sleep deprivation kicked in. I was all a sudden SO TIRED. I was the only one who can feed the baby and my baby just wanted to be eating constantly. Of course, I didn't know that for the first while, babies grow so much and they eat so much. I just felt like I lost myself. I fed the baby, grocery shopped, fed the baby again, cooked, fed the baby again, cleaned, fed the baby again, cooked again, fed the baby again...I felt like a machine. I hated it. I just wanted my baby to sleep! And each time I was awake in the middle of the night, I wanted to wake up my husband just so he could feel how tired I was. Eventually, we worked out a good system where my husband would wear the baby wrap and wrap our girl on him and let me take a two hour nap. That saved me. Also I talked to other nursing moms and found out that we were all the same. I was not the only one who was sleep deprived. I was not the only one who's kid is nursing constantly. I was not the only one who struggles.
Breastfeeding is amazing. Breastfeeding is sustaining my baby's life. Breastfeeding was the gentle reminder for me everyday that my baby girl is alive. However, it was hard. It can be stressful. I needed a lot of support to be able to do it! It was not a piece of cake.
I nursed my girl till I was pregnant with my boy. My milk dried up. One day, I stopped offering. She didn't ask for it. That was the end of my first time breastfeeding.
I've done it once. It should be easy for the second time, right?
My boy came along. I had milk come in right away. I knew how he's supposed to latch this time. I know that I need to drink plenty of water. I know that I will be sleep deprived. I'm prepared.
Until I realize that one thing I really miss about having only one child is that I could sleep when she slept. Now, I'm still sleep deprived from my second breastfeeding baby but my oldest is almost constantly needing my attention. I can't leave her alone in the house without watching her. I can't keep up with the energy either. And sometimes what seems worse this time around is that my girl would get jealous that her baby brother gets mama all the time and she would throw a fit or she would interrupt. It's no longer a peaceful bonding time for me to nurse my baby boy.
Also this time, I found out later that when my boy is teething, he likes to use me as his teething toy. Ouch. Or he would be distracted by his sister in the other room and try to watch while still latching. Looking at my boy's chub chub, I shouldn't worry about how much he has eaten but when he doesn't nurse well because of all the distraction, I worry. Till this day, I still feel bad if he missed his bed time nursing.
It took me by surprise that my mother guilt is extremely strong when I have to feed my baby and I have to send my oldest girl to the living room to "just do something by yourself". She used to be the one I breastfed and holding so close to me all the time. Now all a sudden she seems to be such a grown up.
Breastfeeding itself this time with my boy is not as hard I feel. Probably I now have more knowledge and more experience so I'm more mentally prepared. I'm glad that I could have so much support from my husband and a community of nursing moms helping me to understand that it's all so normal that it can be hard. And also, I can do it!
These struggles are all so real but not many people would tell an expecting mom that hey, breastfeeding is awesome but it's actually REALLY HARD, so prepare for it! Also, I feel that we need more willing people to help breastfeeding moms--take the older kids out for a walk so mom can take a nap; offer to hold the new baby when the baby is not nursing so mom can spend some quality time with the older siblings.
I love breastfeeding. It's beautiful. It's literally the foundation of life. My journey continues.
It's also hard. It's emotional. It could be something that drains the fountain of a mom's life.
We should encourage moms to breastfeed. We also should help and build a community to really support moms who want to breastfeed but facing all these struggles I've gone through.
We need to let new moms know that it's hard but it's worth the effort AND we are here to help! Reach out, and ask for help if needed. Let's ease each other's burden a little bit so more moms can enjoy the beauty of breastfeeding and provide the foundation of life to their babies!
The Long Awaited Family Photo| Mesa Family Photographer
Two weeks before Christmas in 2016, I offered to take some family photos for my in-laws so they can send out Christmas cards with nice photos. We were going to take photos on Saturday but my mother-in-law unexpectedly ended up in the hospital that Friday and was diagnosed with Congestive Heart Failure. Three days after that, her heart surgeon brought us the shocking news that mom's heart was so weak that a heart transplant is the only possible cure. Mom was transferred to Mayo Clinic right away and soon after that she went through an open heart surgery to install a heart pump (LVAD) to sustain her life winning her some time to wait for a heart transplant. Due to some complications, she was under sedation for many weeks and went through 8 operations within that period of time. During her hospital stay she had lots of ups and downs, sometimes even on an hourly basis. There were many times when we didn’t know if she would be able to make it.
I was 8 months pregnant with my baby boy when my mother-in-law was admitted. We kept telling mom that she would see her new grandson soon and we even joked that we are depending on her to take care of our new baby!
With many prayers and her strong will to survive, she was able to recover from her open heart surgery faster than all the doctors had expected and came home in April. My son was born in March so we were very happy that grandma got the chance to see him.
My mother-in-law was able to come back home in April to continue her recovery journey but it is far from an easy one. Gaining back her strength and getting used to this new life with a big device connected to the heart is challenging. Special diets are required. Staying healthy in general is top priority. I was with a brand new baby and I was helping her with cooking her special meals, medicine administerings and many other little details. It's safe to say that the whole family is a little bit overwhelmed with all the new norms and all the uncertainties. No one had the spare energy to think about photos at the moment. I made sure to keep the traditions of a monthly photo for my baby boy but that's about it.
Now I look back on that period of time, I wish I could have picked up my camera more. I wish I could have documented the first step my mother-in-law took without a walker. I wish I could have documented my crazy grocery trips shopping for three kinds of dietary needs in one family. I wish I could have documented how my little baby gave his grandma much needed cheers and joy every evening when she was depressed about the dark night. It was a very difficult but special time. Even though it was not a beautiful time in our lives if not the darkest time, all the struggles and trials we faced together made us closer than ever as a family. All the miracles we witnessed along the way made us ever more grateful for the time we have together as a family.
Life goes by fast especially when life is busy. Christmas 2017 came along quickly. This time, I made sure that I get a nice family photo. Maybe with my mother-in-law's health condition, it is more urgent for us to make sure that we have photos together as a family because we don't know how much longer we will have with her. However, this is true for everyone. Life is too short. Life happens. I know this sounds cliche, but memories will fade away unless they are documented. I'll have to say, I was very happy that I got to keep my promise after all to take some nice photos for my family.
