For Christians, it’s pretty safe to say that the best Christmas gift we receive EVERY year is God’s gift to humanity – “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” – Isaiah 9:6.

The story of Christ’s birth is a crazy and chaotic one, far from the peaceful nativity scene that we picture. It started off with disgrace and humiliation. Imagine being engaged to someone and finding out that they are having a child.. that’s not yours. An angel appeared to Joseph in a dream and reassured him that Mary’s words were true – she had not been with any other man, but was a virgin conceived by the Holy Spirit.

Next was the obstacle of finding a place to stay in Bethlehem. Because of Caesar Augustus’ decree to take a census, all the people of the Roman world had returned to their hometowns to be registered and there was no room to stay. Joseph and Mary not only had to sleep with the animals… they had to deliver a baby there! Even after His humble birth in a stable, the story wasn’t over. King Herod plotted to kill the king of the Jews and decreed that every infant son under the age of 2 would be murdered. Joseph and Mary fled to Egypt and saved Jesus from this death sentence.

Amidst the shame, filth and murder… our Savior was born. Given the circumstances, His birth was truly a miracle.

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The SECOND best gift I got for Christmas this year was this:

Ryan’s parents invited my family over on Christmas day, which was a pretty big deal to me! It meant so much to me to see our parents chatting and getting along. They met many years ago and see each other a few times a year (it wasn’t the first time they met or hung out) but this time it was a special occasion.

This is what happens when my boyfriend is unresponsive and I start getting anxious. He wasn’t responding to my texts asking about his dinner plans, so I sent him this image via text:

And he STILL didn’t respond. So I sent the original.

I love being a ridiculous girlfriend. ^.^

Once again, thanks for the thoughts and prayers for my dad. He went in for an ultrasound and now all we can do is wait for the results.

On a similar note, I had the pleasure of experiencing something like a “flash fever” while working at two weddings this weekend.

Photographers at the photo booth!

Just moments after that photo was taken, I began to develop a sore throat. It seemed to get exponentially worse by the minute, no matter how much I increased my liquid intake. By the end of Friday night, my throat had swollen to a point that made it very, very painful to swallow. It was weird. I was fine that afternoon. I was even fine at the beginning of the reception. Could it have been an allergic reaction to the fish…?

Damn you, stupid fish!

Despite the fact that I wasn’t feeling so good, I went back to work on Saturday for a wedding in San Francisco. BAD IDEA. It would have helped to know that I had a fever but I didn’t know I had one…

Skip all the boring details – I ended up going home early instead of staying for the entire wedding. I was useless as a photographer anyway… I had no energy to move around and it hurt to talk. Fortunately I was the second shooter so it wasn’t a huge crisis, but it would be if those were my clients! Gotta have back up photographers in case something like this happens in the future! Thank you Van for rescuing me and giving me a ride to my car – it would have been a real burden for the main photographer to drive me across town between the bridal shoot and reception.

Modern medicine is amazing. It said that it would last 8 hours and sure enough, I woke up in pain at 5 am because the effects had worn off and I was in pain. Haha. I feel MUCH better today, praise God. Definitely going to avoid eating fish for a while…

Hey everyone,

My dad received a phone call this morning asking him to go to the doctor’s office immediately. It doesn’t sound like good news. Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers this morning as we wait to find out what is going on.

I was too embarrassed to tell him, but he was a hero in one of my recent nightmares. I dreamt that I was a badass pirate going around and killing everyone on this pirate ship with a sword. All was going well for a while… until they figured out the culprit and ganged up on me. I was hiding, sobbing, begging for my life… and in the end my dad came in and convinced them not to kill me.

I’ll update when we find out more.

** update **

The doctor doesn’t know what’s wrong so my dad is going in for an ultrasound tomorrow. He’s been on medication for a few months and it’s not working so they’re trying to figure out why. Thanks for the kind thoughts.

I received an email from a client who wants to submit her photos to a few wedding blogs. Every single sentence except one (which was a question) ended in exclamation marks.

“Hey Fern!

I just joined TWO BRIGHT LIGHTS to send photos of my wedding to different blogs! But they only allow the photographers to load the photos!!! Can you load the following photos on TWO BRIGHT LIGHTS so I can submit them? Thanks so much!

Here are the numbers to load up! Thanks Fern…24,33,44,48,50,52,120,160,112,116,108,95,24,49,42,59 AND the one with me rings and the close up of me!!

Thanks Fern! Please let me know when this is done so I can submit them to the two blogs!

Cheers!”

Somebody needs to calm down. LOL.

Question: The client is always right, right? Does this mean I am expected to do extra work (create an account, load those photos, etc)? This request is triggering such a bad attitude in me, probably because I have enough work to do and I know it will take a while to do this favor.

Additional background info: they paid me $500 for wedding photos and the wedding was a disaster. Haha. I’m not very eager to work with them again, though it was my fault for agreeing to shoot a wedding at a fraction of my normal rates. (In my defense, I only did a half day coverage instead of the normal 8 hours.)

What should I do?

** edit **

Okay I’m going to submit them. lol.