Friday, March 26, 2010

Ashley and Curtis are MARRIED!

Ashley and Curtis are two extremely sweet people. Pearl and I had a blast capturing their special day last week, and were thrilled at what a cool day it was.

Here are a couple of things about their day that we loved:

- the weather was simply amazing! It was one of the nicest spring days of the year so far.
- Curtis had a way to make us and everyone else laugh. He has a spunk and humor to him that make smiles creep on your face without you even noticing.
- They had the coolest, funniest, wildest dancing kids you could ask to be at your wedding. Seriously these guys could go on the road as party entertainment.
- Gram (aka Curtis’s Grandma) was the best senior dancer I’ve ever seen. She really knows how to “get down with her bad self” and one can see where Curtis gets his spunk from.
- Ashley’s eyes are amazing! She’s a gorgeous girl, who simply looked fabulous. Plus she was super sweet all day.
- And there are about another hundred things I could write but I’ll stop it there and let these pictures speak for themselves.

Ashley and Curtis, thank you again for inviting Pearl and I to celebrate with you on your special day. You guys are a special couple and I wish you the best in your new marriage.

Sincerely,
Matt










Love is in the air...

Walking around Lancaster City with a landscape architect and school teacher makes for some amazing conversation. Chris could share on the style of the streets, the shape of courtyards, and how the history of Rome can be seen throughout our city. At the same time, Kelly enlightened me on the use of imagery and pictures to help students who are born with speaking disabilities learn how to connect words with objects. I felt like my IQ increased just by being around them! Well, these two intellectual ones are also in love and we are looking forward to their “Black Friday” wedding this coming fall. Here are a couple my favorite images from our stroll around the city, and I look forward to sharing some more pictures of them come November. Chris and Kelly, thanks for waking up early to hang out last week and may the rest of your wedding plans go amazing! Looking forwarding to seeing you in a couple of short months.

Sincerely, Matt








Thursday, March 18, 2010

27 silly moments in the spirit of turning 27 today


I’m turning 27 today, so I guess I should start acting like an adult now, but on second thought I think I'll keep putting that off for a couple of more years.

So to celebrate refusing to grow up, here’s 27 of my more youthful, silly, stupid moments. Some from back in the day, others from yesterday.

1 – Sleeping in a hotel parking lots because I refused to pay for a room

2- Peeing in my room’s air vent because walking across the hall way was just too far to go to the bathroom.

3- Throwing all my sisters rings in the swimming pool because she made me mad and I couldn’t express my feelings in words.

4- Mooning… a lot of people, in a lot of different places, why? Because who doesn’t want to see my butt?

5 – Putting a baseball through my dad’s store window because to me it was a hockey puck (the ball that is, not the window) and the cane I was using as a hockey stick gave me just a little too much “lift”

6 – Putting battery operated Christmas lights in my 74 Volkswagen beetle because I love Christmas so much I wanted to celebrate it even more.

7 – Having the cops called on me for cutting doughnuts in the church parking lot, in my Gold beetle, all because I wanted to show my friends how powerful my 4 cylinder was. (ps. I drove home before the cops arrived and my friends totally lied and said they didn’t know who drove a gold beetle, They were the best Church friends a guy could ask for.)

8 – going on a moped ride with a group of complete strangers through the backwoods of Thailand to a refuge camp. Why? Because the main guy was our cook at the village we were staying in and I thought he was a good guy.

9 – Jumping off a 50 foot cliff somewhere in Jamaica, Because I couldn’t be called a chicken.

10 – Lingering in the cafeteria in college for an awkwardly long time, because I was hoping Pearl would come to dinner and I would “happen” to still be there.

11 – Having to get our small pick up truck pulled out of a muddy cornfield by a farmer and his tractor because Pearl and I thought we could “make it through”

12 – Sitting on the middle of a frozen lake in a pop up tent, with the world’s largest ice drill, a thermos of coffee, tiny fishing pole, and a frozen butt, because my wife wanted to show me what living in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan was like.

13 – Almost shooting my parents with a loaded crossbow, because I thought they were burglars and I had to protect my sister from what she thought was “a big hairy man at our door” (she never said if she was referring to mom or dad, I think she’ll take that secret to the grave)

14 – I wrecked (leaving a good bent) on Mom, Dad, and Grandpa’s cars, because I was convinced I really knew how to drive by the time I was 14

15 – I placed a 4 by 3 foot cross made from tree limbs at the end of our country driveway that looked like a bad tombstone, because Hank, the stray dog I befriended a week before, had needed a respectable grave marker.

16 – The refrigerator in the house I grew up in now has a BB size dent because I felt like seeing what my BB gun would do to it.

17 - I once took a friends camera into a public bathroom to “surprise her with pictures of a bruise on my upper inner thigh” when a stranger walked in on me, He didn’t stay around long enough to realize what I was and wasn’t taking a picture of. I was hoping it might be able to help me out.

18 – I once dumped an entire cage full of gerbil poop into our bathtub, which clogged the drain, cause I thought that would be the fastest way to clean the tank.

19 – I once bicycled across town during a Tornado watch and hail, cause I could have sworn those warnings weren’t really going to happen.

20 – I once flipped an entire rack of “clothes” at Victoria secrets cause I thought that was the best place to hide while shopping with my mom and sister.

21 – During a family trip to a local park, I ditched my family to hang out with an African American Church group having a picnic, cause they had better food and I had never talked with a Black man before, but I forgot to tell my parents where I was going, they seemed really excited when they finally found me.

22 – I once rubber banded our sinks water sprayer on, then asked mom for a cup of water…. Only to watch her get sprayed. I laughed really hard, but mom somehow missed that joke.

23 – Speaking of torturing my mom, I once loudly proclaimed in the middle of a department store that the smell we all were noticing was because of her, which wasn’t true, but she was still red in the face, truth be told someone had broken a bottle of “deer pee”

24 – My best friend and I drug down the road a $400 weed eater across town, cause we each thought the other had tied it.

25 – When I dad opened his drug store I told all my friends mom’s I hoped their families got very sick, I just wanted them to see my Dad’s new place.

26 – speaking of Dad and the store, we once were checking in on one our elderly clients to find that she had fallen and was needing assistance, I offered to go get a rope out of the car, tie it to her ceiling fan, and Hoist her up. Dad said that was a creative idea, but maybe not the best, the client didn’t appreciate me referring to her as needing a rope and a “hoisting” to pick up.

27 – I recently played a children’s balloon popping game online until 4 am knowing I had a full days work and graduate classes the next day, cause I was convinced I should be able to bet it.

I’ve had a fun life, have a great life and I’m so thankful for the amazing people who are a part of it.