The last few days have just been a dream. I have no idea why we give birth in the hospital. If we were sick people go-I know, bc I was sick and it felt all icky and sad to me. I had a beautiful view of the foothills from a tiny window that was all the way across the room from my bed. So it was a weird-dreamy-like-claustrophobic, day spa. Such a strange experience to be in a hospital. The nurses at Boulder Community are awesome . And now I am fine. So bring on the photo sessions-it is not work, photography is the love of my life and the more I do, the better I feel.

More tomorrow.

xoxo staey

Anyways, update on health. I felt awful yesterday-almost just went into the ER. But took mega doses of steriods and felt better this morning! Life is good! Get me on some new experimental drug and let’s go. I am ready to be healthy.

Can’t wait to photograph 21 month old Lincoln tonight! It is a beautiful day in Boulder and perfect for photos. Here are his newborn photos if you are curious, wasn’t he the sweetest? Look at that face! Those eyes! His expresssion! Can’t wait to see him again after all this time.

xoxo stacey

I am finally feeling better, yay! I still am losing like a 1/2lb or 1 lb a day, so I am tired and worn out, but I can feel my belly healing and my symptoms are lessoning. I did cranial sacral therapy yesterday with an expert visiting from Germany. I have never done it before. It was kind of strange. She just moved my body in gentle, weird ways. It felt like a half hour but was really an hour and a half. It was like a dream, and afterwards I felt very dreamy and peaceful. Yeah, this is all classic Boulder-hippie-out-there stuff, but I am willing to try anything. This morning my acupunturist lit sticks on fire in my legs. So there. She heard of some man in Detroit who can energetically heal people, and there is a small part of mine that wants to go seek him out and pay him thousands of dollars to energetically take away my old-woman-witch-disease.

Anywyas, to be proactive I sent out some emails to some crohn’s research centers seeing if they can study my family. The chance of passing it along to your child is 5%. And my Dad passed it on to all FIVE of us. That is just so unusual. They need to take our blood and find a cure or an actual cause. It is such mystery.

Off to a photo shoot at a pumpkin patch now! I love this time of year. We are going to Munson Farms in Boulder-I photographed families there last year and it was beautiful!

Things are ok here. Getting a little bit better day by day. 60 mg of prednizone. So yeah, fun but no fun. Update tomorrow, hopefully I am feeling super well by then…

UPDATE: my intern’s adoptive baby was born tonight. SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO happy. Yeah! I can’t wait to meet and photograph your baby girl!!!!!!!!

So the not happy news is that they looked into my belly today and found only really bad things:( My dad has’ crohn’s both my sisters have it, and both my brother’s have it. I have always been the one with “mild” chron’s, and now it is severe. Stupid old woman evil witch disease.

Happy news again? I have like 50 shoots planned in the next two months. LOVE photographing, no matter what. I have outsourced everything else, so no stress there. Just taking beautiful photos of beautiful families. Love it!

xoxo stacey

Barb Uil (aka Jinky Art) is just magic. She is my most favoritist photographer, blah, blah, blah, I have said this 8 million times on my photography blog. But really, these photos are beautiful and stunning and sweet and magical. I love them. I can’t wait to move in to our new home so I can put up beautiful big canvases. I still am in awe that she photographed my family. And really captured who we are. For sure.  I strive to be half as good of a photographer as her. As always Barb, I love you! Thank you!

So, news on the being-sick-thing. I am definitely surrounded by loving, supportive people who want me to heal and get better from this chron’s (autoimmune). I called my mom crying yesterday and she jumped on the first flight out there. That is a GOOD mom, right? I have a procedure tomorrow and hopefully we will find out what is going on. I saw a naturpath today and and plugging away with my awesome acupuncturist, Kate, but I am up to 40 mg of predizone (steroids) and ug, that SUCKS. Send me some good healing-belly-energy if you have some to spare.

xoxo stacey

ps. happy jinky art photos of my family are really helping me feel better:) Nothing like beautiful photography of your own family from your favorite photographer to make you happy.

pps. Thank you mom, Luanne, Natasha, Kate, Kellie, Adam, Rich, and Arturo for being such a solid community of support for me. It means everything to me to be supported.

Well, I got the salt-on-fire-in-the-belly-button treatment again today, but I am feeling so bad. I think with a chronic illness like this, you get to this point where you are just so tired. So tired of being sick. The hard part is that I am not actually getting any food in me, so I am weak. And tired. And my husband is obsessed with aquaponics and is mostly only doing that and Amelia just had the flu and I am just tired. And caffiene makes me sick so I have to give up coffee and I am sad about that. Did I mention that I am tired? And can’t have caffeine?

Overall, though, I am super happy that I have booked TWENTY FIVE mini sessions. That is just nuts. And I still have people emailing and calling to request a session.

We have a crazy month ahead of us. My lovely office manager, Kellie, will take good care of everyone (and me!) and Reg, my gorgeous sales manager, will help everyone with ordering. All I have to do is take the photos, and that is what fills my heart with joy, so I think it will be a good month as long as Kellie and Reg pick up my slack (total bonus included at the end of the month if they are reading this post and mention the bonus:). I mean, they have to read my blog, right?

So, I filled up my two weekend mini photo sessions completely, and opened up two more dates if you are interested. Wendesday, October 12th at Chataqua in south Boulder, and Wonderland Lake in north Boulder on Saturday, October 22nd. So if you were on the waiting list or just want to schedule a mini session email me asap.

How am I going to remember all these kids names? That is the thing I am worrried about the most. I know I will get beautiful images of each family that is special to who THEY are, but if I see them on the street I might not remember, and I ALWAYS remember kids names. Parents names, eh. Kids, for sure. So, if you are doing a mini session with me and I call you a weird name during the session or ask what your husband’s name is ten times, please know that I LOVE all my families, but this year there are just so many mini photography sessions and I am tired and might not remember. But I still love you and your kids.

More tomorrow.

xoxo stacey

p.s. posting another sweet photo from this session, because it is all I have on my laptop, and my hard drive is still stupid crashed. So, this is all I have that is sized for blog.

pps. That is my sweet new kitty simba. He has the same roar and tenacity as the real lion king. Love him.

ppps. I did everything for my computer hard drive crash and I still can’t see my photos:( All edited shoots for the last year are backed up though, so no worries….

And I have been sick, sick, sick. Yeah, I have crohn’s disease. Such an ugly name. I wish it was Sunshine Disease or something more happy. But a crohn is an old woman-evil-witch, right? So I have old woman-evil-witch disease, and it sucks. I have so many emotions around it, but mostly I am sad and mad. Sad, that I can’t love my babies in the way they deserve right now, and mad bc it is a stupid disease that they don’t know anything about and they can’t cure it and it is just stupid. And it hurts. And I can’t smoke pot to help it like they suggest bc I don’t like mj. It makes me feel weird and paranoid. But, on the upside, I DID gain 55 pounds when I was pregnant with Amelia, and I have lost the last 15lbs in 4 weeks. So I am looking good. I am thin now. I am trying to eat lots a fat though to not lose any more. So now you know my life. It is what it is.

I have about 30 mini sessions booked. It is nuts. I am opening up a few more days if anyone else wants to book a mini session. I am SO looking forward to just going out in nature and photographing loving families. That is a good day, to me.

xoxo stacey

ps, Amelia’s stomach bug is gone but I *hope* i have it and it is not my evil old woman disease.

pps. Christian, my computer guy, just told me at 8:30pm that my computer looks good. There is some program that has to run and then it will be fine. Give me some good energy for it to run again!

pps. do you LOVE this picture? So sweet.

ppps. I just want to let you know that I let my acupuncturist filled my belly button with salt and lit it on fire today. AND-I feel much better. So go-fire-belly-salt. Fire belly salt rocks. Thanks Kate. I love you.