my cup overfloweth (August 6 people 12 times)

photo by Tara Whitney

Settle in, this is bound to get wordy, mostly because the words I want to say haven't been spoken into existence yet. There are times in my life when I feel I will burst from love and happiness, one of the very best of those times was in August on the beach, which is really my favorite place of all.


Several years ago I came across the scrapbook world and there in the middle was Tara Whitney (she's laughing but it's true). I started to follow her work in an online community and remember when she announced on the forum that her husband had bought her a Canon 10D. From the beginning her photos captivated me, they were real and raw. I have been a blog stalker and Tara junkie since then.


When we left home in May and headed towards the pacific I began to scheme. I started a life list not so long ago and one of the things on this list was to have our family in front of Tara's lens. When it looked like we would be finishing out the working season in CA, I contacted her to make this happen. I was a super determined girl at this point and even told Dan that I would need nothing for Christmas if he would give me this.



photo by Tara Whitney


We met at the beach on a beautiful Monday night. My kids in their thrift stores clothes and worn out shoes. It had to be that way, I wanted the real us to be captured. I wanted to look back at the photos later and remember everything about this time in our life. She was the girl to give us this. There were no posed, pretend moments.



 photo by Tara Whitney


This photographer girl came along with us that night, but when she left there was more to it than that. We clicked with her, my kids were themselves in front of her (possibly because I had talked about her so much that they felt like she was family). 


One of the really important things that I wanted captured from that night was the love I feel for Dan. We joked that night that she was giving us marriage counseling, we stole a few moments while the kids were off on their bikes and she gave us this.



photo by Tara Whitney


When she showed me the next photo on the back of her camera that night, tears flooded my eyes. It was us. The us that we are when it is just the 6 of us and no one is watching. Us, on our bikes, at the beach in the haze of sunset, us with our home in the parking lot, us in the middle of the fullness of our lives.



photo by Tara Whitney


When she left us that night, my heart was about to burst. The sand had hidden itself away in all of our clothes, the kids were soaked from the sprays of the ocean, my foot was bloody from the rocks, but my heart....full and content.


(I won't tell you that when we left we ended up stuck in a cul de sac, unhooking the car so that we could turn around, I won't tell you that we hadn't eaten dinner and it was 9 o'clock, or that we ended up eating Carls Jr because it was the only place we could get into with our 50 foot rig. Or that now when I refer to Tara I say "My friend Tara Whitney" once a stalker, always a stalker)


I will however tell you this, when she sent me the link to our photos I tweeted this "Sitting in the parking lot bumming wifi to watch our slideshow from @tarawhitney. This mama heart is weeping." and a few moments later this "I wish I could buy each one of you a session with her. There is no price tag on what she gave to me, to us."


Dan is laid off right now. Our Christmas will be small and simple. But we will have this night forever.



photo by Tara Whitney