jodified

I don’t have a tag line for my business. For Jodified. And I need one.

My hands down favorite tag lines are these:

Ali Edwards: Capture Life, Create Art.

and

Sarah Q Photography: Photography for happy people

But I am just stuck.

I’ve been stuck for about a year now actually.

And every time I print a new marketing piece it reminds me just how STUCK I am.

So I am asking all of you for help!

Remember when you named our baby?

This isn’t quite so dramatic but I would love your help!

Leave your idea in the comments on THIS post and I will think of something great to give the winner… IF there is a winner!

Get creative and HELP ME PLEASE!

Thanks!

If you’ve followed my blog for a while you know I have a sister. And she’s one of my best friends. And she’s awesome. And she blogs. HERE.

You might also remember that she’s pregnant with their second baby, which means I get to become Aunt JoJo to another little… GIRL!

YEP! She’s having a GIRL!

Which means Samantha gets a sister! And that makes me SO happy!

Especially after being able to watch my little girls together for the last 2+ years. There is seriously nothing like sisters.

I love my girls!

Just have to throw in this photo of Parker and her sheep… blowing this up for above her bed I think!

And here’s my sweet niece… the soon-to-be BIG sister!

I love this shot of her little feet…

Then one night when they were in town we decided we wanted to try to get a shot of all four kids together. BUT when those kids are ages 1, 1, 2 and 4… ummm… that’s just about impossible.

SO. Rather than put any kind of pressure on ourselves we went outside post bath time one night with them all in their jammies, threw a quilt in our yard and went for it!

The photos are NOT EXACTLY perfection. Ahem. AT ALL. But they totally make me laugh b/c it is SO them!

You will notice my kids sleep in JUNK. I started collecting random t-shirts a couple of years ago b/c we always seem to do our painting in the morning so now I don’t worry about them getting messy, we just keep our jammies on until after we CREATE! They just never look cute at bedtime anymore!

And then even though we hadn’t even showered yet that day, or at least I hadn’t (!), we decided we needed to jump in there too!

A perfect photo? Nope. Our life? Yep.

And then as I was digging around for photos I found what I thought was a super sweet photo of my sister and her sleepy daughter.

HOWEVER.

What I really found was my niece giving me the finger! HA!

CONGRATS Abbie, Chris and Sam… we can’t wait to meet that new baby girl!

and I don’t know if it was my guilt that he was up with the kids and I was sleeping or WHAT but my dream was that he had cancer and was dying. And in the dream we were on vacation with his parents and my parents just waiting for him to die. Because the doctor had given him three weeks to live. But what was even worse was that Grayson had the same diagnosis. So we were all waiting for both of them. And I just kept thinking how empty my life would be without my two men. And I woke up crying.

Does that ever happen to you?

And when I woke up it was because Chris came in to cuddle with me in bed. And when I told him about my dream he called for the girls to come cuddle with me too. And then it turned into a wrestling match. And everyone was giggling and tickling and laughing. And my world was right again.

I hate that though, when I have a dream so life-like I wake up worried it’s actually true.

Anyway, so in thinking about Chris and what I would do if anything ever happened to him I realized that I never told you guys that HE TURNED 30 while we were on vacation in Florida!

30.

I turn 30 in October but right now I’m NOT so I signed his card, “love, your 20-something wife!”

His birthday was one of my favorite days on vacation! The kids and I had gone to the dollar store before we left and bought 30 gifts. STUPID little things that they had a blast picking out for him. So we wrapped them ALL up, put number on them and that was what he opened in the morning. We also made him his favorite breakfast, he had free time at the beach and got in a good nap.

The best part though was that evening we got to go out to dinner, WITHOUT our children! And with our best friends, Kevin and Angie! So we were getting ready to walk out the door and leave our poor parents with all SIX kids when I showed him a few more gifts in the living room. He was surprised b/c he really thought the huge amount of CRAP he’d opened that morning were all of his gifts. But OH NO. I had a HUGE surprise for him!

PLAYSTATION 3!

And of course we had to get him his favorite game so my parents bought him the soccer game, whatever it’s called.

And the MacBryde’s got him a huge bottle of Makers Mark.

The perfect set of gifts! HA!

He was SO surprised b/c he’s wanted one for a while and I kept saying it was too expensive or that I didn’t want video games in the house or whatever. It was awesome. He was so happy!

Anyway, then we went to dinner but on the way the sun was setting and it was BEAUTIFUL light so I made Kevin pull over, we ran across a random boardwalk and we took a few photos…

Wanna know who was MOST excited about C turning 30? These guys! Our ALMOST 40 year old friends! HA! I know Ang can’t WAIT until I hit the big 30!

Then I handed Angie my camera and had her take a few of C and I… these make me SO happy!

Curious what’s so funny?

This guy walked in front of us and Angie snapped a photo. We were dying.

Sorry, totally mean but at the time also totally funny!

Ahem.

Man I love this guy. And with his 30 birthday we have officially known each other for more than half our lives. We met freshman year at age 14. I love that.

The boys! I love this next one!

I told them they didn’t look natural enough, that they needed to laugh or something. HA!

So when it was our turn the guys told us to act surprised! Such idiots!

I’m putting this one in here b/c I asked Angie to take a couple of me… thinking it might be nice to have a head shot for the website or something. But all of the ones where I looked at the camera I hated. But this one of me laughing at Chris is one of the ONLY photos of myself I’ve ever liked. So here it is! And all I can think about when looking at it is, “man do I have a lot of freckles!” HA!

So anyway.

Happy Saturday!

Chris who is NOT dying from cancer is at soccer, Grayman is sleeping and when he wakes up the kids and I are heading out to enjoy this day! The park, maybe a stop at the soccer field, the Farmer’s Market, who knows. It’s beautiful out! GO!

do you read zack arias?

if not you should. he’s incredibly talented.

i popped over to his blog tonight and when i read THIS post I thought a lot about myself. I won’t go into details here b/c well, I’ve had a migraine all day, I’m tired, it’s time for bed and this is my third post here today and enough is enough.

But I just couldn’t go to bed without sharing these links.

Go HERE.

Watch the video. Read the post. Donate if you’re called.

I sent in $20. One night of pizza to help change someone’s life.

I’m not kidding when I tell you that tears were streaming down my face at how good God is. God brought that man to Zack’s door. He brought him to his blog. And the way God is using blogs makes me so stinking happy.

Go read, watch and be changed.