This blog is SO dead

Ok folks, so I am currently thinking about so many things, and with the New Year coming I have some great things planned, goals I have set for myself, lots of changes, and lots of exciting things. One of the things that I have been thinking about is how I have two blogs. This one for our personal lives and adventures and my Joy Jill one for, well, obviously, my photography business etc. Since I started up my JJ blog I have been slacking immensely on this one. Not to mention there was one post that went to the JJ blog that was supposed to be on here. So reasons why I am ending this blog:

1) For me to accurately update my blog I cannot have two
2) There is no reason I should not post personal things to my JJ blog
3) Even if I want to keep business - business and personal - personal any slightly computer savvy person could easily find my personal blog anyway

AND 4) I am not that embarrassed by my personal life that I cannot share it with my clients and I am sure I will be better off making my JJ blog more personal and interesting instead of only posting shoots (cause as cool as that is it can get a little boring).

So the short story is I am ending this blog and if you want to continue to follow me online go check me out at my Joy Jill Photography Blog

Merry Christmas!

So here are some pics from our Christmas :) We were SUPER lucky that Brian did not have duty on Christmas :) Last year he had duty on both Christmas and New Years so we had to celebrate one day late. This year though was great. We slept in, opened presents, Brian made breakfast (french toast and eggs) while I made some cookies and pies for later, started the turkey, then we got the house in order for later, went for a run with Shugo, and Brian went to get his camera and pick up some friends for our feast! Some pictures.... Shugo loves sitting in front of the heater, Twiggy (our friends dog that we are watching for a bit) likes to just stay on her bed.

Shugo clearly smelled that part of that box was for him...
He was happy! Thanks Chris and Tara! You have AMAZING timing! Your stuff always gets here just in time. I picked up the box on the 24th :)
Slightly out of order. This gift went down in history as the "best gift ever". Definitely won't be able to top this... He has been asking for a fisheye lens for bout 2 years now. He was surprised and VERY happy :)
Thank you Chris and Tara!
This was before he found the lens... he really enjoyed this little panda too, can't you tell? It's a special panda from Beijing, you puch a button and he sneezes.... no. Not really.
but Shugo wanted to eat him.
Breakfast with Tara's awesome rasberry jam! Tara your jams are AWESOME! And we also loved the salsa you sent Brian for his b-day.
This is the first apple pie I have ever made. Crumbly top.... not quite as crumbly as Ikeda's, but pretty darn tasty!

All in all, it was an awesome Christmas! Great time spent with Brian and great to have friends over to celebrate with :) Hope y'all's Christmas was just as good!

The Great Wall

OK, let me start by saying, I am an idiot. I posted pics and stuff from Hong Kong, but I posted it on my photography blog thinking it was this blog. Woops. Not like it matters, but I never planned to post so many snapshots onto my photo blog, and definitely never planned to put a pic of Brian sleeping in bed on there... :) Anyway, it is already done. Here are some pics from The Great Wall! Above is some corn. The small town outside the part of the wall we visited had lots of corn and we had some cornbread with our lunch. Very tasty. Below is a very steep part of the wall. It looks like it just drops off, but it keep going. I timed myself and ran up it in 35 seconds. I then thought I might die and fall off the wall, but I survived.
The cool thing about our trip to the wall is on our way to the wall (we hired a guide and driver for the day) we got stopped at a toll road that they closed off due to fog. We sat in traffic for a while before we were able to make it out. Our guide suggested we go to another spot. She said it would be more hiking, but it is even less touristy than the area we were planning on going to, and less renovated. It was totally awesome cause we had the whole thing to ourselves. It looked pretty small town out there and almost 3rd world country-ish, but it was great and we had AWESOME lunch and the video of how it was made is below :) It was the best fish I have ever had. Absolutely delicious. Thank you Jesus for the fog cause we loved the area we visited :)
Kristan loved the wind :)
Awesome

Yahooooo!
Self portrait time
Another steep part :)

Yes, I did a handstand for crossfit :)



Below is the look we got from everyone. People are not ashamed to stare in China and that was a bit weird for me coming from Japan...