I have moved!

Dear followers of this very neglected blog, I just wanted to let you know that I've moved to a new blog and any visit to this one will be redirected there. I'd appreciate it if you'll follow my new blog too. Thanks! :) Please click here to go to my new blog.

Crazy November

What a busy month! Holiday portrait sessions and different celebrations made November go lightning fast for me. That's why this post never got published until today and it was secretly sitting as a draft for weeks. But here's what I had been up to the past couple of weeks.

I turned 28 (Ugh! why do we get old so fast?) I wish I took more pictures but as I'm getting older I'm becoming more camera-shy :P, so I just took (or had Brandon take) one of me...

...and one of my food. Hehe!

Thanksgiving

Black Friday. I was in Tampa that day because...

...I had to renew my passport there the day after. This is me at the place where I renewed my passport. Brandon doesn't like taking pictures when other people are watching (actually he doesn't like taking pictures at all, I just force him everytime) so we went to the back of the building just for this one.

4 years and counting

For this month's entry, here are some photos from our 4th wedding anniversary on 8.15.11

We went on a dinner cruise which was lovely except for the ticket price and the "baby servings" of food, which was disappointing because the food was delish, and we wanted at least 5 more servings of each.


Brandon, eating as always. :D


He took this one. :)


Two things that take my breath away: my husband and sunset.


To add humor, here's a picture that John Freida could use as an ad for their anti-frizz (more like anti-crazy hair) products. Where was my ponytail when I needed it most? To the stranger who was sweet enough to offer to take this picture of us, if Google happened to send you to my blog and you're reading this post, THANK YOU for the favor...


...and to the waitress who took a few seconds of her busy working hours to take this shot.


And lastly, thank you sunset for making the night more romantic than it already was. We felt like Jack and Rose while standing on the deck and watching you fade away. Ha!

I'm Alive!

Well, hello rejected blog! I missed you. :D

May--- No blog entry.
June-- Nada.
July-- Zero...well almost.

I promised myself to write a post before the month of July is over. I forgot about that (when do I not forget things?) until right now. Time right this moment is 11:24 pm. Oh crap! I only have a little over half an hour to write my one and only entry for July so I better make this short.

Quick not-so-interesting updates:

-My husband and I moved back to good ol' Florida after 3 years of living in Utah. Do I miss Utah? Heck yea, just don't start talking about the snow.

-Of course when we decided to move I had to quit my job in Salt Lake City. I've always had a love-hate relationship with working but right now, I'm not missing it yet so I'm gonna have a long break.

-We've only been here for a month and we're moving again next month. But not to another state or even city...just to another home address. Ha! We had to stay in my parents-in-laws' house first until we find a place that we like. And we found a four-bedroom house that's just 15 minutes away from my husband's parents' house. We got a good deal from it and I'm very excited to finally live in a house. I mean, eversince my husband and I got married 4 years ago, we've been renting an apartment although some of the apartments we used to live in were really nice. So yay for the house.

-I feel like I can finally focus on doing photography now that I don't have a day job anymore. And I'm excited doing it in the area where we live. People here are not cheap, haha.

-Brandon has started talking about babies. Yikes!


I may have been away for a while but I think about you a lot, my blog. But when I don't post anything here for longer than a week, it just seems hard for me to get back to you. But believe me when I say that it only takes me one new post to get me active on the blogosphere again. So maybe we'll be close again like we used to be, especially now that I don't work anymore, and should have more time writing (hopefully).

The end. (Time left before August 1 is 15 minutes. I'm so proud of myself :P)

Baby Blessing + Reunion

I just noticed that I didn't post anything for the month of March. I kind of made a New Year resolution that I'd post something on this blog at least once a week. But that just doesn't seem very possible right now. With a full-time job and doing photography part-time, I've never been this busy in my whole life. My 2 days off from work really isn't enough. They just go towards cleaning and organizing, and doing groceries and running errands.

Anyways, Brandon and I were in Parowan, Utah 2 weeks ago for the naming and blessing of my nephew, Gavin. In LDS Church, we have the ordinance of blessing and naming the babies that are born in our Church. It's like the baby officially becomes a member of the Church and is officially named. But this is different from baptism. Children are not baptized in our Church until they have reached the age of 8. Usually families gather together for the baby's blessing. So when Gavin was blessed, it was a reunion. It was sad that my family in the Philippines couldn't come. They missed out on so many other important events already. :(

First day in good ol' Parowan.

First thing I wanted to do was take pictures of Gavin. I missed him a lot. Last time I'd seen him was when he was only a week old.

At 3 months, he's now so much more fun. He giggles when I play with him, and oh, he smiles and laughs a lot.


First night.

We had ourselves a good dose of Wii workout

I love Kristine's in-laws. Aside from being really nice people, they're also a lot of fun to be around.

That's me in stripes, getting my groove on.My poor husband was having a hard time focusing the camera on me.

Meet Kiers, probably the most hyper little girl I've met. She reminds me so much of my youngest sister, Roxanne, when she was her age.


Uhmm...don't try this at home, k?

I could post 20 pictures of her doing her tricks.

Who dat?! :P


Second night was Gavin's blessing. But before the ceremony we had a meet-and-greet party at the LDS chapel.

The Bartons. Gavin wasn't in a happy mood for family pictures.

If I were five years old, he'd be my boyfriend :) Ha! Seriously, this boy is really cute.

Shianne. I have more pictures of her here.

My favorite part at any event.


After the big dinner, we proceeded to the blessing and naming of the child ceremony. It's not that I'd be hung upside down if I took pictures of the ceremony, but I chose not to. I just felt like it would be rude for me to be clicking my camera and distracting everyone else who were very reverent. So fast forward to about an hour later, the ceremony was over and we took more pictures.

Kristine's family and her parents-in-law


I'm no expert at child photography but I've learned that if you tell kids to smile or say "cheese", they're more likely gonna give you this:

or this:

But if you tell them a joke, (even the corniest one), it becomes more natural :)

Gavin in his cute blessing outfit. It's the same blessing outfit that his dad wore for his own blessing. Sweet huh!

Such an angel! :)

Out with the old, in with the new pictures

Brandon and I finally had our new pictures done (see the new side bar pictures?). We did them just inside the apartment and some in the backyard. We took turns taking each other's picture, and it ended up that I took more photos of him than he did of me. We took these pictures because the ones that were on the side bar were very old. The photos have to keep up with the new blog look, haha! So now it's just Wyatt's picture that needs to be updated although he's too cute in the one that I'm currently using in the side bar that it doesn't necessarily needs to be replaced.

But me and Brandon taking pictures of each other, believe me, isn't a fun thing for us to do and for other people to watch. lol. These pictures pretty much explain why, and give you an idea what it's like when Brandon and I are having our little "photo shoot". :D

He hates taking pictures and 5 minutes after the first shot, he goes "Can we already finish this please? Let's go!"

And I'm a whiny, picky subject.

"Bes, you're too far. Get closer!" (but smiled anyway)

"Camera's too high, bes. Lower it a bit!" (but smiled anyway)

That's why our pictures aren't always updated. I wonder if there are other couples out there who when it comes to taking pictures.

To close this post, I'll leave you with a pic of me and of B looking so tight. Haha!

Can't get enough of my husband's cuteness? lol. More pictures of him here.

Wyoming Trip. Can You Say Yeeehaw?

Here are more pictures from our trip to Wyoming last month.

The men's daily activity, playing video games in 3D.

GQ-ing it

It was always 70 degrees inside my sister and her husband's house which was understandable assuming that since she just gave birth, Kristine's body temperature was still boiling hot. And this was Wyatt's idea of keeping himself warm. I don't like it when he's laying on my laptop because he sheds a lot leaving gazillions of hair on the keyboard. But the entire time that we were in Wyoming we had to keep Wyatt inside one of the rooms, away from Harvey, because they would never get along. I felt bad for Wyatt that he was stuck inside the room while the rest were having fun, so I just let him do this.

And this is Wyatt's least favorite "housemate", my sister's dog, Harvey. Harvey who stained the carpet of our old apartment with his pee. Harvey who scratched our old aparment walls until some of the paint came off. Harvey who you better not leave in the house by himself or a cop will knock on your door because a neighbor complained of his non-stop barking and crying. Harvey, who despite all that, still melts my heart when he looks at me like this.

We had Christmas dinner at my brother-in-law's parents' house with the missionaries. Since both my husband and brother-in-law went on a mission, they had plenty to talk about with these men. After dinner they spent the rest of the evening playing cards.

Wright doesn't have McDonald's, Burger King, Olive Garden, etc. They have Subway and this restaurant (I forgot the name). So this place is the fancy place to eat in town. We ate here on our last night in Wright and there were only 4 customers. Me, Brandon, Justan, and Kristine. Haha. But I tell you, I'd pick this restaurant over the Cheese Cake Factory in Salt Lake City any day.

The food was t-t-t-tasty! tasty!

I don't know about you but I had never seen on a menu a steak as big as 32 oz. Must be very good because Justan ordered it.

Everytime I look at this pic, I feel like the moose is staring back at me. Don't you?

It was time to go back to Salt Lake the next day. :(

We just barely left Wright when we saw deers on the left side of the road as we were driving. There were like 10 of them but these 2 were running up and down the hill, one chasing the other. So I grabbed my camera and was lucky enough to snap a pic of these deers. If I lived in a small country town like Wright, I'd probably be chasing deers everyday to take pictures of them. :D

My Newly Reconstructed Blog, and an Old Blog I found

My blog is now finally back for public viewing. To those who tried to visit this blog and got a message that said: "This blog is open to invited readers only", that was because my blog was "under reconstruction". Please read the previous post.

So here it is folks! The new look and the new address. You like? I love how clean it looks now. I especially love the header. I know it's nothing special but I made it and I like how it turned out considering that I have next to zero knowledge in graphic design. Now, I just have to change the pictures on the side bar and my profile picture because they're pretty old. As for the new blog address, I wanted to combine my name and Brandon's but the brandonandlaura address is already taken, so is brandon-laura. I was a little surprised to know that there's are least 2 other couples out there whose names are Brandon and Laura. And guess what I found when I typed brandonlaura.blogspot.com to see if somebody already owned it? Our super old blog! It's almost 5 years old and haven't been updated that both me and Brandon literally forgot that we had a blog together. Brandon made it when we were only engaged and back then I had no idea what a blog was. I love how reading that blog brings back sweet memories, and it motivates me to be more active in blogosphere.

So LBCarree.blogspot.com it is! Why it works? Because not only LB stands for Laura [and] Brandon, it's also the initials of my maiden name.

Changes

Happy New Year to you! (yes you, my reader :P) I hope you had a wonderful 2010. New Year resolutions taped somewhere in the house? Ha. I remember when December 2008 was about to come to it's end, Brandon and I wrote down our goals for 2009. We like to write down goals instead of resolutions although they're pretty much the same. I taped my list on our bedroom wall and Brandon taped his on the side of his computer monitor.

Speaking of goals, I'll try to update this blog more often this year. Maybe at least once a week? So wish me luck. Also, I'll make the following changes to my blog:

-Overall blog look. I'll make it more simple and more clean-looking. If I haven't mentioned it yet, I'm a minimalist. So less is always more for me. Always.

-Blog address. I didn't wanna do this but I'll be using the address of this blog for my photo blog. So I have to think of some new address. And maybe change the blog title too. Suggestions?

What are your goals and planned changes for this year?

Before the year ends...

...I'd like to update this blog and greet everybody "Merry Christmas!" Sorry I'm almost 2 days late for that greeting. I've been here in a small town in Wyoming with Brandon since the 24th to spend the holidays with my sister and her husband and in-laws...and her brand-new baby boy! Yay, I'm an aunt now! I'll have to post some pictures of her stinkin' cute babe here later. And since I'm on a vacation, I haven't done anything but sleep, sleep, and sleep.

So, since I don't get around here much often, I feel obliged to write an update of what happened since my last entry. I tried to remember as many as I could, but these are all I can think of for now:

November
I turned 27. That's pretty hard to believe, and even harder to accept that I'm getting older fast. Ha!

December
-I became full-time at my second job so I had to quit my other job last week because me working 2 full-time jobs at the same time just sounds insane to me.
-I became an aunt for the first time. What a blessing!
-I bought a new DSLR camera a week before Christmas as a Christmas present for myself. :)
-Christmas morning was awesome!

Pictures will be up for this post soon.

update (1/16/2011): and here are the photos! :)

We slept in on Christmas morning and didn't open the presents until about 10 a.m. So while the neighbors had already gone back to sleep after unwrapping their gifts, our excitement just started to kick in.

We did this tradition at the Bartons' residence (my sister Kristine's parents-in-law) and I was glad that we did. Why? Because me and Brandon got tons of presents from them, something that we didn't expect at all. They sure are amazing people, and ever since Kristine got married to Justan, I have always felt like Justan's parents are my family too.

We took turns opening the presents, and I was always itching for my turn.

This one is from my mom-in-law. I still don't know where to put it so its temporarily just sitting on top of the fridge (I hope Brandon's mom won't get to read post.) I suck at decorating and I'm so good at procrastinating to decorate.

I normally don't do the peace sign because it kinda annoys me that everybody does it especially when they do it in every picture. So this is probably the only peace sign picture I have and will ever have. Anyway, this was the last bag I opened because I wanted to save the best for last.

The fat guy in the funny red suit was so good to me this Christmas.

I'm inlove with my new baby.

Considering that it was a winter month and we had a good amount of snow 3 days earlier, Christmas morning was unbelievably beautiful in Wright that I honestly didn't care for a white Christmas.

To close this post, I'll leave you with a pic of my adorable nephew. I swear I couldn't get enough of this teeny-tiny guy. Meet my new favorite boy, Gavin!