Photography Blog

We've started a new photography blog/website (layout look familiar?) Check it out! :) MBKB Photography

Otherwise, not a lot to report this week. My last day of Saturday tutoring is coming up and I couldn't be more excited. Then, I finally get to visit home! We're still fighting the good fight and trying to find more work. I can't wait until the photo business starts moving along.

Mid-to-late Summer

Summer has been passing by for us, week by week. Since I last updated this, we've been able to go to the OC fair with my aunt and uncle, which was a lot of fun. We love doing things with close family.

Summer school has been challenging day by day, but satisfying, which I love. In one class I have a struggling learner and a highly advanced learner, so there is the challenge of differentiating their work and how I teach. The next class is full of rowdy 8th grade boys, but I respected them first so they respect me back. My last class is all girls and 1 boy (wonder why it's my best class ;) and we have really great conversation, and they care about the deeper issues in what we read. I'm going to miss it all when summer ends, but hopefully another opportunity will come soon.

Last week I had lunch with two sisters from church who are SUPER awesome. Even though we don't have any immediate friends, we're starting to get to know people more and it feels good. Mike and I gave talks in church last Sunday and everyone loved them (we even got a few tears). Our topics were from April 2011 conference: Eternal marriage, and Whom He chastens, He loves (Sunday PM session). Last week I also hung out with Vasty and her boys. It's really nice to have a friend close enough to chat with and vent to/with and just have girl time (even though her boys were there :P). We got a few casual shots too, since she doesn't have hands free often to get some of her own.

I can hardly wait until I don't teach on Saturdays so we can take a weekend trip to my parents' house! I feel like my weekends are taken too soon :\ Last Monday was pretty funny though. I started pretending to be a baby in the morning, stomping and whining about it being Monday, and took off my clothes one by one and chucked them at my pillow, saying, "Mondays, take THAT!!" and then Mike started saying, "Ooo, I like Mondays! Yay Mondays!" LOL.

Aaaaanyways. I've kept myself busy with job apps, Wii fit, the gym, couponing, etc. and now I talk to Mom every Friday on the phone. Miss my parents tons. Mike and I really want a pet, it just feels so weird without one. 

We're having a contest for our photography page on Facebook. Just "like" the page and get 5 friends to "like" it as well, and you're entered to win a free photo shoot or Blu-ray copy of "Snow White." So far it's slow-going, who knows if it'll help spread the word, but it's just a shot at a marketing tactic, so we'll see! We'd love to take photos for a living, it's so fun. Someday...

And, today I had lunch with Mike down by his work at Five Guys. The verdict is in: In-N-Out > Five Guys. (For you non-math nerds, In-N-Out is greater than Five Guys.) I could make a better, healthier, less-greasy burger at home. Nom nom In-N-Out. They have their own unique taste.

Finally Got a Beach Day!

Last weekend we went to Doheny Beach and met up with Mom & Dad Burr, Matt & Amy and the boys, Tommy & Jayme and the girls, Stephen & Natalie and Marlie, and Terri's brother Todd, along with Jayme's parents. It was perfect weather and a beautiful day. I want to go more often and take advantage of being a Southern Californian! I played around and got some great shots of Marlie and the beach (see the end of this post). The Friday before, we had pizza and hung out with my Aunt Pam and Uncle Mike with their new pup Izzy. So cute. It's also fun to have relatives closer than usual.

Work has been draining, even though I have only part-time work, which is nothing compared to Michael's 50 hours a week. I have to come up with different creative ideas for each class, reading three different novels at a time, and then we'll switch soon. However, it keeps me on my toes, so it's fun. Most of the kids are doing well. I baked them cookies, shared some with the neighbors and also mailed some home to my parents. Miss them tons!

Tonight we walked to a bar around the corner and met up with our upstairs neighbors. We ate a few $1 tacos (taco Tuesday) and played pool. Mike invited him and his girlfriend to church, and the guy at least seems open about it. They're really nice people. I just wonder if they're ready and willing to make some lifestyle changes. It feels good to at least get the invitation out there and make some new friends.

Marlie at the beach

Liz's Pregnancy Shoot

Last weekend I had the opportunity to take photos for my new friend Liz and her cute baby bump :) We had fun being silly and had some heart-to-heart conversation. Liz is one of the nicest people I've ever met and I look forward to continuing our friendship!

OC Summer

As of the 4th of July, Mike and I have been dating for a year! That was our first date, so fireworks are really special for us. We were invited to Jeremy and Vasty's apartment for barbecue, and then we endured traffic to watch fireworks from the top of the Disneyland parking structure. Fireworks are extremely popular around here, we saw tons being shot in every direction from the freeway on the way there. The only downside was that people kept shooting them after 11 PM and we wanted sleep.

The next day was my first day teaching summer school. I was nervous but more excited, and it turned out to be a great day. I'm glad I planned my whole course schedule ahead of time, so each day is full of stuff to do, and being the teacher, it goes by quickly. They're all at least part Vietnamese, some struggle, some are super quiet, some are relaxed, some nod and smile yet they don't understand. A mixed bag. I hope they continue to pay attention! Mike got a promotion at work, but it's more work and more hours. A lot of the material he works with is unorganized and not prioritized, so some of it should be delegated instead of heaped upon one or two people. Hopefully he'll be able to start doing that sooner than later so we can keep our sanity. It's also been rough so far dealing with the heat. Our landlady said if we keep the windows shut during the day it'd keep the heat out and the cool in. Instead, it just makes it stuffy and humid inside. We're dying for AC but there's nothing we can do except stand in front of our fans.

If anyone is planning a Disneyland visit, we're right next door so let us know and we'll meet up! Renee came out for a day and we had a blast hitting up a lot of rides and taking pictures.

In our new ward I realized there is really no one my age to hang out with, so I may not be very social. I hope to spend more time with Vasty and her boys and have occasional double dates with my friend Steve and his wife Melinda, and my aunt and uncle who live in Lake Forest. I'm hoping to balance some me-time with friend-time and husband-time so I can feel normal and not so lonely during the day. I got so used to seeing my parents every day that it's hard to not miss them and get sentimental. Luckily we're visiting them this weekend, yaaaaaaay!!!

Another Crazy Week

After I felt all "caught up" last Friday, the week just blew by again. Especially the weekends, those go too fast. We drove out to Simi to hang out with my parents for the weekend and it turns out Allyson and Peter were passing through on their way to a wedding literally 3 miles from our apartment. I was glad we got to see them for part of Saturday and Sunday nonetheless. On Saturday we immediately started our laundry, washed and waxed Mike's car, got showered and I headed off to Laura's baby shower. It was awesome to see a lot of familiar faces and then I took family photos for Laura and Cameron with Evelyn and they turned out fantastic.

Vasty & Jayden, Laura & Evelyn - their husbands set them up for future husband and wife ;)

Evelyn Rose

Evelyn Rose

Morrissette family portraits

After a quick bite to eat with my family, Dad decided we were taking the second leather couch since they had already found replacements from the first we took for the apartment. The original plan was to come back to the apartment that night, but I was aching for time with my parents so we stayed over another night, which I was REALLY grateful for. I have such an awesome, supportive husband. We spent most all of Sunday with my parents and headed home. I miss them a ton still and hold on to every moment I get since I don't live there anymore. Each day with them is more special to me now than ever, I've turned into a huge sap.

On Monday and Tuesday I was so glued to photo editing that I didn't leave the apartment all day. I've learned this is VERY bad for me to not vary my activities, because even though I was productive, I didn't physically go anywhere so some part of my mind didn't think I was a good girl (which I wasn't, I played hooky from the gym). After a long talk with Michael I got everything out of my system and realized I'm happier when I set goals for myself and make a to-do list. Our whiteboard on the fridge now lists things I can do if I ever linger on only one project.

The learning center I work for seems like they'll be giving me two classes to teach instead of one, which I was warned I may only get one, but no one else prepared a 7th grade syllabus and course schedule but me! So we're in luck. I'm glad to be bringing some income to the table. We were so blessed from the wedding that we have a great start and were able to save a good portion of the gift cards we received. Also work-related, Michael is coming up on his 1-year with SG so we'll see what happens! Our next goal is to get enough combined monthly income to get an apartment or condo mortgage closer to the Irvine area.

I haven't made any fast friends at church yet, and I have Vasty and Jeremy nearby, so I went to visit on Thursday and had an awesome time talking and hanging out with her cute boys. We'll take family photos of them soon, which I'm excited for. I love seeing the shots as I catch them and playing around, and then seeing the final editing product, so cool. I've added that family to my prayers, they're so awesome. That night Mom and Dad Burr were in the area so we went to Knott's Berry Farm, ate at Pink's Hot dogs, and saw a show or two and rode the Pony Express.

Today I drove down to SG and joined Michael and his co-workers for "Sleepy Hour" AKA get paid to build company community and drink and be merry. We got silly on our shirley temples. Traffic in Orange County is horrible. I plan to never drive before 9 AM or after 3 PM if I can help it.

Us outside The Cannery for Sleepy Hour

Getting Settled, Wedding Photos, Little Lantern Photography

Our first few weeks together have been great. I love cleaning house and cooking (ask me again in ten years and that may change, but right now I'm good :) and hanging out with my husband when he gets home from work. Work for Mike has been slow, and then all of a sudden got extremely busy. They'll be moving to a bigger building, still in Newport Beach, by the end of the month. Hopefully he'll also find a niche to work and progress in the company over time. He's great at listening, working hard and making people feel valued and they've definitely noticed that.

I got over my cold fairly quickly, I think it was just my body needing a few days to recover from the wedding and honeymoon rush. It took me a few days to get comfortable being on my own in the apartment while Mike is at work, but I think I'm managing. It's hard to feel productive when you don't have a set schedule each day and don't have to get out of your pajamas... all day. I've managed to make it to the gym, clean, cook, make my 8th grade syllabus for work, organize the gifts we got, and we stay out of trouble with a trip to Disneyland here and there since it's so close, and watching the show "The First 48" on Netflix. We got hooked on the honeymoon when we were cooling off in the hotel room and can't stop watching. Also, I've discovered that since there are a lot of Vietnamese natives that live around here, I'm sorry but there are also SO many bad drivers. For instance, today I saw someone reversing in the middle of an intersection because the light turned from green to yellow. I've also gotten my first (and hopefully last) parking ticket - stupid street sweeper schedule - and am getting used to our neighbors. A few of the people on our street don't have storage spaces, so they take all of the parking space on the street and use their vans full of stuff to park there. Crazy.

Other exciting events include: several times a day, someone nearby plays "La Cucaracha" on a loud car horn; a guy walks around honking a bicycle horn from 2 to 6 or 7 PM selling ice cream; and last week a transformer blew up behind another apartment building and caught several trash cans and trees on fire. I went to the gym, took a hot shower while we still had hot water, and did some grocery shopping until the power came back on. Exciting times! Mom & Dad Burr came over one evening and we made tacos and Terri's famous beans. Yay company!

Last weekend we hung out at my parents' house for a day since they were gone to Nevada for Dad's birthday (He has the same birthday as Terri! Small world :). Junior (Mom's cat) really missed us and was super cuddly. We spent some time at Mike & Diana Gwynn's wedding reception in the evening and then headed back to the apartment.

This week we went to Disneyland, and yesterday all of the Burrs got together at David & Terri's and went out to a local barbecue eatery in Chino called Dickey's Barbecue Pit. The food there is YUM and the meat falls off the bone. Yum yum yum. It was nice to see family after getting used to being on our own.

Yesterday I worked all day on our photography website and got it up and running! It still needs work, but at least we have a portfolio going. Check it out!! The Little Lantern Photography

And, if you have a Facebook profile, "Like" us! Facebook: The Little Lantern Photography

I've been working my butt off editing our wedding photos... it's been SO FUN!! I'm so happy with how they turned out. So far we just have the temple ones edited, and haven't even gotten started on the ring ceremony and reception. Every time I see a photo of my parents and my sister and I, I get weepy. :sigh: Need to visit!!! We'll be visiting my parents this weekend for Father's Day since I'll already be out there for Laura's baby shower. Yay! Here are just a few of our photos. The complete album is here. We'll hopefully be making a private password-access album for families so you can download the full-quality photos for printing.

Aloha Honeymoon

While Mike is at work I have some time to catch up and post honeymoon pictures. All of them are posted on our FB album as well.

After the wedding, we returned Brother Walden's Mustang to his house and went back to my house, changed, organized and grabbed everything we needed before heading out to Garden Grove. My parents and Allyson and Peter made it home as well and we helped unload everything. The back of Peter's truck was full of gifts, it was insane. Then after the long drive to the apartment, we unloaded our stuff and well, you know :) Let's keep this PG and say we played hide and seek. haha. I won't mention what days we played hide and seek on the honeymoon either, it just goes without saying :P

On Sunday, Dad Burr and Amanda (Burr) drove us to the airport, and we were off! When we arrived at the Honolulu airport it was nice and humid. We had a guy from Costco "lei" us and take our bags and drive us to the Aston Waikiki Beach hotel. Good thing too, because we were exhausted from the non-stop wedding day and jet lag. When we got to our room however, I thought I had an "ocean view" room. Apparently that meant you step out onto your balcony, lean over and look out to the left, and there's your view. We bit the bullet and upgraded a little more to get the "ocean front" room we really wanted. This may be our only Hawaii trip for a long time so we wanted it to be the best. When we got to the final room, the AC was sooooo slow! We called the front desk to see if they had fans and they didn't (!) so we waited it out. They asked if they could send a technician and we said no, do it tomorrow. 20 minutes later (we had already gone to bed), knock knock and here's the technician. Geez. So he looks at it and sets it to stay on. Then, 20 minutes later (we've gone to bed and are super sleepy) the phone rings. (Seriously?!) and it's someone asking if the technician came. I gave a very blunt yes and he says "OK.... ... thanks!" "BYE." Check your clocks people! We're exhausted! haha.

The next morning, Memorial Day Monday, the sun rose very early, so we were able to fully enjoy the ocean view, and wow it was awesome. We were excited to do tourist-y activities so we took a tram out to Pearl Harbor. As we got there, some people had extra tickets for the 10 AM boat ride to the USS Arizona Memorial, so we only had to wait a half hour instead of two hours. We explored displays of the events leading up to the Oahu bombings, watched some videos, and enjoyed the atmosphere. Very cool stuff. The AZ memorial itself is beautiful and humbling. So crazy how so many hundreds are entombed there. Some survivors chose to be buried there with them.

Us on the boat ride

One of the tubes on the USS AZ

Lookout tower on top of the USS AZ

List of those who died, along with a list of those interred here who survived (lower left corner)

USS AZ Memorial

When we got back to the hotel we were exhausted. The heat and humidity just sapped all of our energy. (Well, not all ;) Later on we found an all-you-can-eat buffet with crab legs, YUM. We were so on it. So good. We walked around the main drag by the beach and saw a few street shows, did a little shopping. There was a group of black students who put together some tricks, mostly jokes and flips, which were pretty funny. We brought my mini laptop to a Starbucks for free internet off of Kuhio and got to watch hookers pick up guys/get picked up (I think this just turned PG-13). They stick out because they wear these specific types of heels, and they walk up and down and up and down the street. It was like watching real-life Sims.

Rainbow view from the hotel

The next morning we went to Duke's restaurant down the street, as was recommended by some Australians we talked to on the Pearl Harbor tram, and stuffed ourselves with their breakfast buffet. It was at that point that Michael and I looked at each other and said "We gotta stop this, we're making ourselves sick" haha. No more stuffing face, you just don't feel good. We had planned to go to the Polynesian Cultural Center that day, but they couldn't find our reservation just by our names. After many phone calls, Laura's friend who had reserved our tickets gave us the confirmation number, and viola, they found our tickets (under our names... don't know why it didn't pop up earlier!). However it was past the time of the last bus pickup, so we rescheduled them for Wednesday. We decided to do a temple session and rent a car so we could explore at our leisure. Driving up the eastern coast of Oahu and coming through a tunnel, you see these BEAUTIFUL mountains formed by volcanic activity, covered in greenery. We were able to see what real Hawaii is like outside of the tourist-epicenter of Waikiki. The PCC is right next to the temple in Laie, and everything was beautiful. Families live together in order to afford their housing, most have two jobs (and one is tourism related), and have just what they need and nothing more. An eye-opener compared to the extravagant lifestyles we're used to seeing in California. The inside of the temple was beautiful and we also checked out the visitor's center and talked to the sister missionaries. Then we drove further up North Shore and stopped in at Turtle Bay Resort. The difference between here and Waikiki was night and day - North Shore is much more relaxing. We had a beachside dinner at Ola's, it was romantic and delicious, everything we'd hoped for. It was dark out when we left, so we drove down H2 and H1 highways back to the hotel.

View on the east coast after the tunnel

Kelly @ the Laie Temple

Laie Temple

Turtle Bay Resort

Romantic dinner we won't forget

Wednesday was jam-packed with the PCC all day. Our tour guide was awesome, his name is Germaine Jeffrey (atypical of a New Zealander, he liked to point out) and we called him Cousin Maine. The whole day was fun, entertaining, and all of the staff were friendly (and most likely nearly all LDS). They called everyone cousin, made jokes, treated us like friends. The village presentations were great. After the Tahitian dance lessons, all of a sudden it started pouring rain. We hung out in one of the covered sitting areas for awhile, then saw the rest of the shows. Samoa's was funny, Aotearoa's (New Zealand) was intense - the guys slap their chest raw during their dances. After picking up some souvenirs for Matt and Amy's boys, we headed to the luau. Yum! The kalua pig was great. The presentation was a bit cheesy at times but overall it was nice. The night show - Ha, The Breath of Life - was so good it could've been Disney quality. We were especially impressed by the fire dancers - so intense! Photos weren't allowed, but I'll remember it for a looooong time. On the bus ride home, our bus driver kept everyone awake with jokes and silly antics, like having us pretend to flick our boogers at passing tour buses, haha. Entertaining but exhausting.

Tonga Village

PCC scenery

Thursday we used as our designated relax-day because that's mainly what we wanted to do. We didn't get to see all of the tourism sites or do all of the activities we wanted, but we did want to relax, big time. We said goodbye to Oahu by watching the hookers off of Kuhio, and walking along the beach. On Friday we grabbed some breakfast right before it started pouring rain. Luckily we were safely taken to the airport and flew home. We landed early, but there were some malfunctions with the ramp they connect to the door, so we had to wait. When my parents and Ozzy finally were able to get us, it was nice to be on our way to Simi.

Aloha Hawaii sunset

The next morning we opened gifts (which took two hours) and lazed around. After getting showers, we made stops by the Walden's, Burr's, and other places to drop off gifts. My Mom and Dad took us out to Chili's for their anniversary (Happy Anniversary! Thanks for spending it with us) and then we packed up what we could and headed to Orange County. Home sweet home. I caught a small cold but am mostly over it :crosses fingers: though it's really made me slow down. It's no fun when you can't breathe through your nose at all.

Still sleepy, opening gifts, including a blanket Terri made

Overall we're very happy to be home and getting back into the daily grind (booo work). I've picked up a few photo gigs so I'm very excited about that.