Yakima

After taking Diane & Taylor's engagement pictures and then Diane's Bridals, she asked if I'd come to Washington to photograph her wedding. Even though I'm not technically doing weddings, the opportunity for a trip sounded fun. 3 Reasons strongly enticed me. 1) My brother would also be going because Taylor is one of his closest friends. 2) I had never been to this part of the country before. and 3) My BYU roommate Abbi lives there and I haven't seen her in 5 years. So I flew into Yakima, Washington 2 days before the wedding to hang with my roomie. Abbi is someone who I haven't regularly kept in contact with. She's a non-emailer/blogger, and I don't know how to use a phone very well, but she is someone who without having talked to her much, I knew I still wanted to visit and hang out with. I knew we'd fall right into place as if we'd lived in the same town all this time.

To read a story of how we met, go to this old blog post from last year.

(Click on images here to see them bigger)

I saw Abbi in Utah about 5 years ago, but she didn't have children yet. She got her Masters Degree in Speech Pathology, which is very impressive to me. While her husband attended Columbia in NYC she worked and then had their son, Jett. After moving to Yakima a year and a half ago, she had little Leia. It was SO much fun for me to see her in "mommy mode." She is an amazing mother, very patient and loving. We even had some fun home decor chats which we didn't talk much about back in the day:)

Her son, Jett, has loads of energy and one of my favorite things he did while I was there was when we were making chocolate chip cookies for breakfast. We spooned the chunks onto the tray and he knew not to eat them. When he was close to them, and we were on the other side of the room, he looked at his mom, grabbed a dollup of cookie dough and darted off to the other room. She had to chase him down and we were both laughing pretty hard at that.

I was both grossed out and amazed that when we ate out at the Chinese Buffet, his favorite was the clams with cheese melted on them. He sucked that slimey stuff right off of the shell. He is only 2.5 years old.

Abbi's husband was out of town, but I know him from school, and it was actually kinda nice to have just girl bonding. Late night chats about life then, and life now. I have met each of her 5 siblings and even stayed at her parents famhouse in "small town" Illinois many years ago, so I enjoyed catching up with her on her family members, as well as sharing about mine.

It was a joy also to see her the same strong person in the gospel that she was years ago. I got to meet some of her friends there when we went out to dinner, which is nice to see who my friends friends are. I took lots of picts of her with her kids, and she even lent me one of their cars to drive to the wedding spot. Very generous.

Upon leaving, it really broke my heart to think that we couldn't live closer. She is someone that I loved then and love even more now. I think more joyous is to see that we are still the same. Marriage and children and life changes don't change us. Deep down, we are the same, and that is wonderful. We've just sweetened with age:) I started thinking about lots of great friends that live far away that at one point in my life, I was very close to them, but because of proximity, it just isn't the same. So many people that live all over that have helped shape me, taught me, shared memories with me. THIS is why I LOVE blogging so much! Keeping in touch. I need to get Abbi to turn on her computer to at least email, but she says she has housework or something to do.

Even though I have several chins in this close up, I have to put it here b/c Abbi looks lovely. She wouldn't intentionally show her teeth b/c she has braces (pulling together the 2 BABY teeth she just got pulled).

oh yeah, it also snowed one day...here are Jett and I launching spider webs from our hands.