I have started this post several times today and still can’t find the words to express any more than what is: my husband’s father, known to all of us as “Pop,” passed away early this morning. On the heels of losing Jim, it is overwhelming at best. We are numb and exhausted.

Thank you in advance for your patience as our family makes the necessary arrangements. I will return messages as soon as I am able.

Love,

Michele

I posted this on my Facebook page yesterday, but in case I missed anyone:

Thank you to everyone who has shared their condolences over the loss of Jim. I have been deeply remiss in sending thank you’s and acknowledging your acts of sincere kindness and support and I apologize for that. To describe our state right now in a word, it’s lost. No real sense of desire or direction…hope was ripped out from under us and we just don’t know what to do or how to feel right now. But thank you. Every note, every card, every little gift does indeed bring a sense of comfort to us and most of all, your patience and understanding helps us all find some way to cope with this loss.

Much love,

Michele and Virgil and the rest of our family

I have been so sick and tired of never being able to easily open/close the curtains that go across our rather large windows because the rings get  hung up on those telescoping rod humps. I searched all over Pinterest and the web to find a solution. I found two: 1) I could make my hubby cut out all new custom length rods (not going to happen) or 2) try this special teflon tape. While the tape has gotten pretty good reviews and would probably be a better option for wooden rods, I just couldn’t wait any longer so I thought I’d give regular ol’ tape a try on our metal rods:

1. Clean curtain rod so it’s free of dirt/dust (that took the longest part for me, ha!)
2. Get out some good sticking clear packing tape.
3. Wrap it securely but *lightly* around the section with the hump – meaning, you want the tape to stay, but you don’t want to press it into the hump…use it to make a “ramp” over the hump.
4. Open and close your curtains ’til your heart’s content.

I don’t know how long this will last, but for now, I am one happy camper being able to use my curtains they way they were intended!!! You’re welcome 😉

I was chatting with some photog friends today about sessions gone wrong. You see, I had big plans for a special Valentine’s Day image with all three of my kiddos, but because of all of the struggle and fighting it took to get there, I just can’t look at the pictures without thinking about how miserable our shoot was. Instead, I posted THIS ONE for today because it was more authentic and in the moment and not forced. I don’t understand why it’s so hard for me to photograph my kids together. Individually, I’m good, but the three of them together and it just ends up with me being a manic maniac and my kids in tears. I don’t like that. I don’t want them to hate the camera.

Time and time again, I remember that the best images are usually the ones that are unplanned (like the one from this morning), but it is my nature to plan. A lot. To a fault. And when things don’t fall in line with my plan, I shut down. When you have three children, you *do* have to plan. Someday, I hope I will learn to plan enough and at the same time, be flexible enough with my own kiddos to adapt. I can do that with my clients. I do it ALL the time with my clients. I preach about it over and over again at my workshops. And yet, I can’t apply it to myself. I started to go down memory lane of all of my personal photo shoots gone wrong (this one in particular comes to mind) and I suppose I’m thankful for those images, too. But I don’t know…I just wish it wasn’t such an ORDEAL whenever we try to do a shoot.

All this leads up to these images that follow up to her four year photo session. I had big plans for the shoot. In my head. But unfortunately, her birthday falls in line with holiday season…the busiest time of year for family photographers. It had been nagging in the back of my mind for weeks, “I have to get those 4 year pics taken! I have to make time for that! I have to have the perfect dress! The perfect shoes! Must have 4 balloons! I need NO rain and beautiful light!” Etc, etc, etc. There were other things going on, too…I was trying to get ready for the Holiday Mini Sessions, my grandmother was very sick, and we were very worried about why my husband’s brother had become so suddenly ill.  My mom (AKA MeeMaw) was in town to help out and I was spilling out all of my worries to her. She listened patiently, like she always does, and she said, “Let’s just go do her shoot right now. Why not? Let’s just do it.” But I wasn’t ready. I hadn’t finished planning. Where would we shoot? I was planning to drive out to this wall downtown, but even if we left right away, we would never make it before sunset. This would be a disaster!

It turned out to be a beautiful evening with my mom, my baby girl, MeeMaw’s pup, and a delicious golden sunset right here in our yard. It was all of 15 minutes. Tear free. And some of my favorite images of my little girl perfectly captured at four. I needed to go back and look at these images tonight. These were taken just days before the holiday season turned into heartbreak for all of us. It was pure joy. It was time spent with my mom. It was perfectly unplanned. It is a nice reminder to me today. Just let go, Michele. Let go and enjoy these moments enough to capture them how they deserved to be captured.

Every single day, I get asked, “How’s Jim?”

I am floored that people think to ask, considering most everyone in this world is facing their own issues and sadness and challenges.

And yet people care enough to ask.

I am humbled.

But I am sad because I don’t know how to even begin to answer that question, but let’s sum it up like this: he’s still with us and he’s still fighting.

Quite literally the day after we got the horrible news on my husband’s brother, we drove up to be with Jim and his family. I brought my camera with me. We decided to take some pictures. It was the hardest session ever. To be honest, even though we are so blessed to still get to see and talk to Jim, it’s still very hard for me personally to look at these pictures. But, I want to share some with you because you should meet Jim and his family. They are good people. And this is a reminder to you and to myself of what Jim is fighting for…of what is worth fighting for:

It has been an uphill roller coaster since November. We can’t ever really enjoy any downhill thrill. We can’t ever really take a relaxing breath. We just keep creeping up a hill that gets bigger and bigger. We were told the day after Christmas that we might have 3-4 weeks with him. We’ve passed that 4 week mark. But how strangely joyous and sad is it that we are grateful for just a week, just a day when at age 35, you’re expecting to grow old and have grandchildren and maybe even one day, great-grandchildren? Jim’s not technically my brother and it’s not my husband and children who are facing this exhausting battle, but we are all feeling it. We all hurt. We are all scared. We are all hoping.

Jim is trying. He really is. I can’t even begin to imagine how difficult it must be to try to eat and eat well when the cancer in your liver is making you nauseous all the time. We went back to spend a few days with them a week or so ago. To see these pictures now, it is gut-wrenching to realize the toll the cancer has taken on Jim’s body in mere weeks. I am glad we took those pictures when we did.

In lieu of the standard chemotherapy treatments, Jim has opted for zelboraf (http://www.skincancer.org/news/melanoma/new-zelboraf-study), a newly approved drug to treat advanced melanoma. He’s also completed a series of targeted radiation treatments. In about another month, Jim will get new body scans and tests to determine the effectiveness of his treatments.

And so he fights. And he waits. And we wait.

The hardest part is that after all of this waiting, Jim’s sick leave has finally run out. It is incredibly ironic that they sacrificed so much for so long so that Jim could go to school and get a good job and take care of the family while his wife stayed home to care for their children. And now she needs to work. AND care for the children. AND care for her husband. AND do everything around the house. AND worry. AND plan for the future. AND maintain hope. I think my heart aches the most for her in all of this.

When we launched j.imprints back before Christmas, it was a quick effort to provide some sort of financial relief to Jim and his family while he underwent treatment. The response was overwhelming. Absolutely overwhelming and I can’t comprehend the kindness and concern and support that my clients, friends, family, and even complete strangers have shown to our family through j.imprints. It was tough for Jim’s wife to accept this kind of help, but I also know it has become a nice little safety net…a just in case…a “my kiddos aren’t going to go hungry” kind of relief to her. In addition to that, you managed to help us donate nearly $1000 to the Melanoma Research Alliance! Wow! Thank you!

We want to keep this effort going and so long story short, we have created a limited edition Valentine-themed release of images. PLUS we’ve added iPhone cases and notecards to the lineup. Please take a few minutes to browse j.imprints. Please, see if there’s something there that appeals to you. Please PASS on the link! Share it on Facebook, tweet it, blog it, e-mail it. Since Instagram was pretty much the inspiration behind this project, share images of your j.imprints on Instagram and tag them #jimprints (have you searched the #jimprints tag on Instagram? Oh, I love seeing everyone’s images displayed so beautifully). And again, because I promise I will mention this every time I talk about it on here, get educated on melanoma.

Thank you all again for everything. Every message of encouragement. Every little gift. Every story shared. Your power to uplift is immeasurable.

…and I welcome the opportunity to recenter myself and make the most out of you. This year will be about refocusing on the simple pleasures of life, like the sound of the dryer humming in the background or the way my eldest gets so excited over each and every beautiful sunrise or the downy fur my middle son still has or the feel of my daughter’s warm little body when she climbs into bed with us each morning. I am redirecting my energies inward…to my family and friends and myself. I will only do things that are good for my soul and the outlook of others. I will take pride in all that I do and treat every moment as if it were the last of its kind. My glass will be half full…if not completely full…if not positively overflowing.

This marks day one of my three sixty five: a recreation of one of my most favorite images of my kids ever. I can’t think of a better way to kick this off than by getting back to the very source of my purpose and happiness. I invite you to follow along. I also invite you to share your three sixty five if you’re doing one. We have the gift of 364 more days ahead of us this year. Let’s see what we can do with them.

I can’t say this Christmas was particularly joyful, but I can say that we all did our absolute best to fill it with as many small bits of joy that we could muster. My husband (AKA Mr. Griswold) did a wonderful job of decorating turning our home into a magical little holiday wonderland. We were very grateful to get to have a lovely “breakfast for dinner” Christmas Eve with my family. On Christmas morning, we drove up to spend some time with my husband’s family and our kids got to have their very first White Christmas. And we reveled in the fact that at least we got to be together. All of us got to be together. The only invaluable Christmas gift I can imagine right now.

Upon returning home, there was a mountain of mail in our mailbox. Dozens and dozens of Christmas cards piled up because we haven’t had two seconds to drive down and check the mail in so long. I spent a good 30 minutes just opening cards tonight and in the middle of it, I just broke down. How wonderful is it to see so many beautiful, BEAUTIFUL families together, smiling back on those cards. Moving notes of encouragement from clients to us…people who don’t even know my brother-in-law, lifting us up in their thoughts this holiday season. Little gifts of appreciation, of peace, of “we’re thinking of you.” The power of your love and understanding is almost too much to bear at times. Thank you. Thank you to everyone who took the time to send out a holiday card this year. You have no idea how wonderful it is to see so much happiness all over the world!

j.imprints is still going strong and the sense of purpose it has given to Virgil and I has been so incredibly valuable. Go search #jimprints on Instagram…how cool is it to see how people are using and displaying their images? Keep sharing. Keep posting. Keep tagging. Keep us hoping.

I’m certain this post is fairly jumbled as we’re all pretty tired and trying to get back into real life after the whirlwind of the holidays. Please forgive me if communication is slow over the next several weeks. So much piled up during the holiday rush and all of the family stuff. And we are now gearing up for the first set of photography workshops at the beginning of Jan. I am very, very much looking forward to immersing myself into the world of family photography learning and teaching and improving and I cannot wait to meet these women who are coming in from all over the world to talk shop with me.

I hope, from the bottom of my heart, that you were touched by magic this holiday season and I wish you all the very best 2013 you could possibly imagine.

Much love,

Michele

She turned four on Monday. Four. Just one year from five. Wasn’t she just three? And now she’s four. She has such a strong personality and still so very girlie. We have many more fights than ever before…strangely enough, they’re usually over brushing her hair (she doesn’t want to cut it, but she doesn’t want me to brush it either) and the outfits she puts together. She actually has excellent taste and I quite enjoy watching how deliberate she is in everything she does. She’s playing more pretend now (my boys never really did that) and it’s nice when I get the opportunity to sit back and quietly spy on her imagination in action. She LOVES to talk about her boyfriendS (oh, dear me) and she is really good at keeping up with her brothers. That girl can match them in a fight any day–she’s cute, but she’s tough as nails when it comes to that. She still snuggles with her pink “dat” and she still sucks her thumb, though she is desperately trying to break that habit. She could read stories all day long and I wish I had more time to do that with her every day. But I do still tuck her in every night and every night, she manages to sneak into bed with us or her brothers. I love that she was born in November and right around Thanksgiving…I will always be so very thankful for her.

Every year, we do a birthday photo shoot adding a balloon. I’m hoping to continue this tradition until she’s 10, if she’ll let me. We had big plans of going into downtown Austin for this year’s image, but with the holiday season in FULL swing for me, I didn’t think that was going to happen until after Christmas. Thanks to the encouragement of my mom (who is in town helping me with the holiday minis this weekend), we managed to pull off a quick, but perfect little photo session tonight. Everything just came together and we didn’t even have to drive downtown. Thank you, Mom! I’ll have to share a pic of the birthday canvases on my wall 1-4 when year 4 comes in.

[P.S. This dress was made by my photog friend, Chantal, with Whimsy and Style Clothing. Her daughter wore this same kind of dress to their session earlier this year and I fell in love it with. Thank you, Chantal, for this beautiful, perfect creation!!!]

that I’m *just* a human. That’s all.

With all of the excitement and running around from last week (and someday, I promise to do a big ol’ post about that), my body just finally gave out. I’ve literally been in bed all day trying to get better and get some energy back and I *really* did not want to do Halloween tonight. But, Halloween doesn’t stop for sick mommies, so we went out for a short Trick-or-treat session tonight. After a few pics, of course, because I’ve taken pictures of them *every* Halloween and it would be sad not to continue the tradition. Fortunately for me, the kids were very good and very quick for the pics, and even faster at Trick-or-treating. What a great age! What nice weather for a change (usually the kids are too hot in their costumes). Hope you all had a very happy and safe Halloween!