Thanksgiving Craze

Thanksgiving this year was filled with love, laughter and loads of stress. You see when you no longer live with your parents, spending a weekend "traped" with them will drive you crazy. And I spent wednesday-sunday with them so I was definately losing my mind. We stayed at my sister's house which can also be a bit stressful too lol. My sister obviously no longer lives with our parents so being "traped" with them for a few days makes her a lil crazy too. She also has 3 children, 2boys ages 7 and 5, and a girl who is 6weeks old. Naturally it's a loud and busy house hahaha. . . My niece is sooo precious! I got some great shots of her this weekend and they are just too cute! Now my nephews will definately wear you out. They love to wrestle, run, dance, be loud, etc. lol. But hey their little boys that's what they do and we wouldn't want them any other way. Don't get me wrong I love my nephews they are sweet, thoughtful, loving, and hilarious! But being a single person who lives alone I'm just not use to the noise and busyness of it all hahaha. Let me tell you if you were thinking of having kids or know someone that is you should send them to spend the weekend over there and see if they can handle it, cause it will certainly make you appricate your life. Now I do want kids some day a long long long long long time from now and hanging out over there just helps me remember that lol.

So I just got to say I think my sister is one of the most amazing people ever! She is one of my heros for sure. She had an emergency c-section with the first one, a planed c-section with the other two but had an emergency historectomy, which she could have died from, with the last one and never misses a beat. She deals with two little boys and a 6 week old girl and does it miraculously. It blows me away that she handels all that like it's no big deal and also deals with our parents being there lol. I know that it's just something you do when your a parent, but I'm not one so I think it's an amazing ability hahaha. . . One day in the very very very distant future I'll have kids and I'll be doing it too and I know that she'll definatly be a great influence on me as I go through it all. Every time she's been pregnant she tells me what I should and shouldn't do when I get pregnant. Everything from food you should stay away from to medical procedures that hurt like hell lol. I'll probably be calling her several times a week when I'm pregnant hahahaha. . . . Forget needing to read books about it I got Erin Kehren as my sister and she's wonderful! She is the best sister anyone could ever have!

Eddie and I playing Jenga. The score is 1-1 we gota break the tie at christmas.

erin and eddie

one more down, and a whole lot of ranting

• Well I finished fall quarter at SCAD-Atlanta on Thursday the 19th. Needless to say it's a big load off my shoulders . . . at least for a little while. I took Project Seminar II, which is a class where you decide what you want your project to be and use the whole quarter (10weeks) to complete it in. It's obviously my favorite class hahahaha. . . . I also took Documentary Photography, which I would not recommend anyone taking cause I hated it. My teacher was the same teacher I had for Seminar II so I had her for two classes and she was a HORRIBLE teacher. Besides having an awful teacher the class was just stupid and completely useless. There was also History of Photography I. I took History of Photography II during spring quarter online, aparently they don't care in what order you learn history as long as you learn it. History I wasn't that bad. Actually the best history class I've ever had. The teacher didn't care if we learned stuff or not or if we payed attention. He gave us the test two weeks before we actually take it to memorize exactly whats on it and in the exact order. However we had to hand write all of it! So that was a huge pain in the butt!!! Your hand would be sore for the rest of the day, cause your pretty much hand writing a 20 page paper during class. I am extremely happy to say though that I only have 4 more classes to take before I graduate! WOO HOO! I can the light at the end of the tunnel. . . I am so ready to get out of SCAD. Yes I am glad that I got to go here because it looks great on a resume and I got to learn all the technical things in a class instead of trying to learning them on my own from a book or the internet. But just because SCAD is an art school doesn't mean that it enhances your creativity. In fact it's just about killed mine.

• You have to understand the kind of people at SCAD. The small groups of weird, nerdy, artsie, freaky people that you went to high school with are now the majority. You would think that anyone could fit in but it's quite the opposite in the strangest way. I am segregated because I don't own anything from rue21, pacsun, or wetseal. I don't do drugs of any kind (and yes the stereotype that most art students do drugs is very true! and their very open about it). And you would not believe the amount of nude people you see; from life size drawings of people hanging in the halls, to actual nude photographs that students took for a project or are showing a photographers work that has influenced them. I do not look at porn, I do not look at nude art photographs and I certainly do not want to see what someone I know and have to see almost everyday looks like naked! Yes there is a difference between porn and nudes but that line is thin! There are people that are very close to that line and some that I feel have crossed it, but in the world or art everything is personal opinion. I guess I am just much more discreet about my body and showing it off to the freakin world. lol. So yea I feel like in the past couple of quarters SCAD is becoming over run with drugs, nudity and sex. O yes people SEX! It was disgusting! A student made a multimedia piece (for those of you who don't know what that means it's photos put with sound and sometimes a short clip thrown in there) for a project and took pictures of people doing drugs, getting drunk, and having sex. Another student took photographs of people shooting up heroin for a project. But that's not even the worst of it. . . teachers show us examples of other photographers work and we normally have to give a presentation in all our classes of one or more photographers who have influenced us. Those are where it gets really bad. Photos of people having sex are always disgusting to me but the worst one that I think was shown was Thomas Ruff. This man no longer takes photos, he now downloads porn off the internet and blurs it and calls it art. I'm sorry I can still tell what's going on in the photographs. It's still porn!!! Another extremely disgusting image we were shown in a different class was a picture of a guy snorting cocaine off another guys penis! I'm sorry but that is not art, that isn't anything but incredibly indecent, crude, filthy, vile, disguesting and many other words that I could type but I think you get my point!

• Now I hate to use titles such as normal to label people, but it's the best way for me to explain my point. In my life, my world, where I come from I am normal. I shop at Old Navy, department stores, Kholes, Target, etc. I wear flip flops or my New Balance tennieshoes all the time. I listen to r&b, rap, hip hop, pop, country, and rock. So just those few things right there, being at SCAD I am no longer the norm. I'm the person that's out of place. I also don't have a tattoo so that automatically makes me the weird one. I've got nothing against tattoo's, I know lots of people that have them and I even want one. I don't have one right now and that's all they notice.

• So because of my looks I am segregated by my fellow students but because of how I think and feel I am segregated my my teachers. The student who takes self nude photos will get an A but I can take pictures of landscapes, architecture, nature, or found objects, put in just as much work if not more into my project and get a B. Simply because I didn't do something profoundly deep, conceptual or in my terms CREEPY!

• So it's pretty obvious that I am ready to get out of SCAD. I love that I have gotten the chance to learn all the technical aspects of photography in a classroom with other people and not have to stuggle trying to figure it out on my own cause I could have never done it. I'm sure my teachers are ready for me to graduate because we butt heads on a weekly basis because I stand by my values and beliefs. Being graded on something by someones personal opinion is almost demoralizing and I'm sick of it.
  

a daily miracle

So I know I'm a little late to be posting this but o well it's earlier than Erin and it happened to her lol. Anyways my beautiful, amazing, older sister finally had her baby. A beautiful little girl named Ansley. She is the cutest little girl ever! And so precious, mainly because of her small size hahaha. . . She was so tiny! Every time I held her she got the hiccups. I felt bad cause she was getting up set cause the hiccups were disrupting her sleep but it was also really cute and funny! I'm not going to go into all the details of the day or weekend becuase there was a lot going on and I'm sure Erin with post something eventually lol. So here are a couple of the pics I took.


and here's Eddie with all his scrubs on, hair net, and trying to figure out how to put the mask on . . . needless to say it was hilarious to watch! lol