I took the day off of work and joined up with my family for a quick birthday celebration Monday night. In preparation to see His Holiness on Tuesday in Cedar Falls, we went to bed early knowing we still had a 90 minute drive in the morning with the doors opening at 8:15.

The drive went quickly, but as we got closer to the university of Iowa, we noticed a long line of cars and time started ticking by and the cutoff for closing the doors got closer and closer. It seemed everyone arrived right when we did. I opted to go the sneaky route and hopped in the quicker moving right lane. I was able to sneak in further ahead after getting through a yellow light that got us to the turn for the parking much quicker. I let Tiff hop out to get in the quickly growing entry lines and I went to find parking. I somehow lucked out and found a super close spot in the lot right next to the building – not sure how everyone else didn’t figure this out but I was ecstatic!

I eventually find Tiff in line and we start working our way forward. It was fun noticing the variety of people attending – young and old, hippies and conservatives (at least conservatively dressed), all colors and religions (we were guessing). There were a few tv crews there and tiff made clear her opinion of Fox…

The lines moved pretty quickly and we made it through the metal detectors with no problems, even with my camera and tiff’s purse. (this was much better than when we saw His Holiness in Chicago of 07 – that was crazy!) We found our seats and watched as the 1,000s more people filled in the stadium.

Eventually the festivities began and the panel, along with the Dalai Lama, were introduced. He informed us that he was late due to a discussion with a chinese journalist (which it sounds like that was interesting) and giggled as he always does. He then got comfortable on his cream loveseat by taking off his shoes, sitting indian style, and pulling out an Indiana visor from his matching robe (which is maybe why he chose that specific visor in the first place).

Discussions started by each panelists giving a quick introduction and talk on their focus whether it be the university’s activities, religious focus, protection from violence, or thoughts on violence and education in general. After each the Dalai Lama would give his thoughts on the discussion topic which most of the time reverted back to his usual message of compassion, respect, and kindness.

A few things i specifically remember were his emphasis on de-emphasizing specific religions but instead focusing on the more basic need of moral ethics in both education and in life. He said do not disrespect religion but rather respect all religions. He said “My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.” Later he continued with “Respect a citizen, respect entire member of society” and said to ignore money, gender, race etc we are “one human family.”

In regards to education he said we have “education for brain” but need “education for heart”. That was one of my favorite quotes of the day and I think that is something that everyone can take away. As always he made jokes, though I think sometimes just to himself and giggled and laughed throughout. His laugh always makes me smile as does his openness to everyone. We left with light hearts.

And lighter wallets… haha! Outside were vendors of various tibetan goods. A few postcards, bumber stickers, scarves and figures called to us. Our stomachs argued and eventually won out – so we left to get a quick lunch.

As part of the festivities a sand mandala was created and put on display during the visit. A sand mandala is a temporary piece of art created out of tiny granules of colored sand intricately laid out to create complex designs typically on a table or flat surface. Tibetan monks train for a long time to design these and 3 Tibetan scholars in the US came together to create this one at UNI. Traditionally these are destroyed shortly after completion as will this one on the 19th.

We were amazed at the design and wandered around it multiple times to catch the small details… the pink people, a tiger, a large lotus, mountains, trees… just awe inspiring. Outside stood a Tibetan tent of some sort so we hopped inside. Tiff showed off her yoga skills while i took a nice break and enjoyed the breeze.

It was a great day to be out and about and we headed home with thoughts on the world, religion, and peace in our minds.

So i had 1 crazy weekend in mid May that was full of great photo fun. I started out with some cute soccer pics from my niece and nephew’s practice games.  It was quite cold, but at least they got to run around to stay warm… all i had was some hot chocolate that they quickly drank

After the games we had Bennett’s 5th Bday party, we took a ton but these are some of my faves.

the next morning i woke up early and bribed my dad to take me out morel hunting. for those of you that don’t know what morels are – they are a type of mushroom that are only found during spring. I believe they grow in both North America as well as Europe and are considered a delicasy by many. Although to many of us farm folk it’s just a way of life- dad/whoever goes out and brings back big bags of them and you eat them for a week or two in many different forms until they are all gone and you are all morel’ed out This was a surprise to my good friend Astrid who got them occoasionally from neighbors or any city people who have never had them.  Lucky for Astrid we did find a few on our hunt- just 5 in 1 clump but dad had some already soaking at home so i was able to bring a few home for us to cook up. while i was out hunting i happened upon many other mushrooms growing in the forest, which i thought would be perfect for my faerie photo project, so you may see more them of soon!

After i got back to town, i went over to Kendra’s house to force her to pose for fun pregancy pictures. I didn’t need or want to do anything too artsy but i’m starting to explore portrait work so she’s my test subject!  I think a few of them actually turned out too

After a short break for lunch, i had to rush off again to get on the road. This time i was headed to a portrait workshop in Rockford at the Anderson Japanese Gardens – beautiful as always but we were there for the model pics not the gardens (maybe next year!). we got to practice natural lighting with reflectors, then off camera flash, then mac daddy lights. overall a great workshop from Nels Akerlund!

so after 2,000 pictures i had some editing to do but overall a wonderful weekend full of great photo fun!

So i am continuing my work on a faerie photo book… i have a great collection from my neice and my sister and 2 weekends ago i took my other nieces out for a shoot of their own… i posted some of the original shots but here are 2 of the final images

well i had written up this whole post and i’m sure you’ve guessed it by now- it crashed and i lost it all. So this may be a bit more abbreviated than i had originally intended- sorry about that…

so we’ve been fairly busy over the last month or so- just doing the usual visiting family and friends… spent some time in elizabeth, climbing at the palisades, visiting renee in champaign, hitting the racetrack to name a few…

we got trin and ben for a weekend in early july and we ended up having a very full weekend! we took the kids climbing at uncle bela’s gym (which they LOVED and we could barely get bennett to stop climbing!), had a playdate with the blackburn kids, and hit the brookfield zoo, and we can’t forget getting cici’s pizza- it wouldnt be a visit without cici’s!

My mom and little sis came in for a wonderful weekend of girlie-ness! We hit Wicked the musical downtown, made fun faerie costumes which you’ll see some of below, and went to the Field Museum to see the mythical creatures exhibit. I didn’t get any photos in there, but i was able to expand my wing library with all the wonderful moths, butterflies and dragonflies they had on display.

This past weekend I convinced Kathy to let me take the girls out for a faerie photo shoot of their own. We needed some fun pics of them for my book i’m working on..

After the shoot and a trip to the pool, we had one more photo sitting to get a cute shot of the all the kids together in their matching outfits Marge got for them a while ago. The last photo is of steven and shannon enjoying the spiderwick chronicles field guide, our inspiration for the morning shoot

Saturday morning we went to dubuque for a mini photo shoot. I sometimes take photos for work, and my sister’s new office was perfect. So i bribed tiff and the kids, kendra and brandon, and even Adam to come with and be my models. I think they turned out pretty good- got some great shots for work but also some funny cute pics of the fam…

Tiffany kept requesting TPS reports, we had a few good laughs… We were pretty lucky in that the kids were very well behaved, we only had a few instances of bennett freaking out a bit… and then adam had a bit of fun with tiff’s little dry erase board…

We ended up pulling up fun websites for the kids to look at, so most of the pictures weren’t even posed. Kendra surfed on knitting websites, the kids checked out funkeys, and tiff showed the kids cool animal planet stuff.

I spent the night at the beltrans and had a slumber party with the kids. We had a great time hanging out!

Sunday was spent back at my parent’s house with a casual lunch. My grandparents came by to join as well as the whole family. We had fun just reminencing about old times and looking at silly pictures of all the halloweens of the past…