Category: Family

  • fun at the pool

    fun at the pool

    I used to enjoy doing a lot of stuff I don’t do much anymore.

    The pool at the rec center closes its summer hours tomorrow, so Jared and I skipped Funny Girl at the Fox so we could take Oliver and Liam to the pool. 

    I wasn’t going to get in the deep end. I didn’t want the chlorine damage to my hair. But Oliver loves the diving boards and the deep end, so it wasn’t long until Liam and Oliver were in the deep end. And Jared joined them soon after, leaving me in the shallow end by myself. 

    That was boring.

    And then I remembered that I used to LOVE diving off the high dive at that rec center pool when I was a kid, when there was one.

    Now, there are just the two lower diving boards. 

    Oliver and Liam had never seen me jump off the diving board at all. It had probably been at least 29 years since I jumped off one of those diving boards; if I had to guess it was probably the summer I was 15 because that would have been long enough for me to do it after my back surgery.

    So I got up there, and it was higher than I remembered. But, I jumped in. And holding my nose with my hands did nothing to keep the water out of my nose because I didn’t remember to blow out my nose as I jumped. 

    And, I had to keep my eyes completely closed, which was not my style back in the day. But I had my contacts in because again, I wasn’t going to get in the deep end at all today. 

    But jumping off that diving board…..it was like I was 10 years old again, in day camp at CPRCAD. It was fun.

    So, I went again. And, I decided, what’s the worst that can happen if I actually dive? I mean, really? I used to dive off the super high dive, and this wasn’t that. 

    I may be 44 years old, and my kids may never see me do fun physical stuff much. But today, they saw me dive off that diving board three separate times. 

    It was so fun. And it reminded me that I should do that kind of stuff more often. 

  • a fresh start

    a fresh start

    It is booking season again– at least it is at Caroline Price Photography! 

    I started a Facebook ad on July 5 or 6 and it has been super-successful— I am so pleased to have talked to some wonderful new brides! And I am thrilled to be there for their big days! 

    The ad won’t be continuous, and my rates are likely to change after August or so, for any bookings after the end of August. I’m so glad I can give a lot of folks some great pricing, but it won’t be sustainable long-term for the business. 

    I am nearly at capacity for 2024! I have room for 2-3 more weddings left on my calendar then I will stop taking 2024 weddings. And 2025 capacity is looking like it is going to fill sometime in the next month or so, as well!

    My heart is full, as always. I LOVE my clients. 

    On the personal front:

    Colorado was a very nice break, with some drives in the evenings in the mountains and website work during the day at the hotel. 

    I missed my “smile” anniversary with Jared. For those of you who don’t know us in person— we met on a dating website, and that site allowed you to send “smiles” to people you were interested in. Jared sent one to me on June 30, 2003, and I sent one back that July 1. I mark it every year, except this one, apparently. Maybe 20 years was my capacity for remembering the smaller anniversaries like clockwork. 

    Jared says he didn’t miss it, but I don’t remember him saying anything to me about it. Oh well. 

    Porter, our oldest son, will move into his dorms at Georgia State to prepare for band camp in mid-August. As I have said in multiple places, I am not ready. I am not ready to have my heart split in multiple places. But I know this will be good for him, and I know he’s going to be fine and do very well. And, I am thrilled he will be a philosophy major. That department treated me very well in my religious studies program and I know he’s going to enjoy it. And bonus— he exempted out of all the English and math classes he would need due to IB and AP scores, so if all goes well he’ll be a sophomore at the end of his first semester. And, he hasn’t ruled out the 5-year BA/JD program. I don’t know how I feel about the idea of one of my children becoming a lawyer, but he’s been interested it at least the entirety of his high school career. Regardless of what he decides to do, I am a super-proud Mama.

    Liam is starting the college tours at the end of July! Up first will be Georgia State and UGA. He’s got Kennesaw State, West GA, and GA Tech also on his list to check out, but we couldn’t schedule any of them before school starts so those will wait until later. He’s my pragmatic child, so he’s unlikely to find any of the private liberal arts type schools interesting, looking in favor instead to what will be the best financial decision college-wise.

    I am drafting this while I am sitting at the city pool with Oliver; I’m so glad he loves to swim and loves to jump off the diving boards. Today, there happen to be friends from school he knows and I am glad about that. He’s big into flight simulators at the moment and we just got him registered a week or so ago for Aviation Challenge next summer in Huntsville. But, he’s going to have to prove to us that he can eat school lunch this year before he can go since we can’t send food— he’s a picky eater like me and Porter. 

    Somehow, coming home from vacation in Colorado has felt like a fresh start. It had been since 2018 that we had been anywhere close to that far west. 

    I told Jared I could live in the Denver area if he ever wanted to look for employment out that way. I know he’s leery of taking me that far away from Atlanta, though. And Liam has two years left of high school and Porter will be in school in Atlanta, so it’s a really bad idea. But those mountains are gorgeous and I do not get the land-locked feeling that I got when we lived in Iowa, with the mountains close by. I know Jared would love to live in Colorado— I know it’s his favorite place he ever lived— but I know he won’t do it, because of us. 

    That’s all for now.

    Love, Caroline

  • hi from denver!

    hi from denver!

    Hi from new site hosting! I spent the past four days, while I am holed up in a hotel room in Denver, re-building my WordPress site. I converted back to self-hosted WordPress from Showit. Showit is phenomenal and I would highly recommend it for anyone looking for a business site, but honestly it became out of my price range. It wasn’t ever really in my price range to begin with probably, but now I am trying to be more responsible in my expenses.

    I’ve decided to continue with Caroline Price Photography; I am open for bookings! With the decision to stay in business has come a new pricing structure. It is outlined on my “Photography” page, but weddings will be $600 for up to ten hours of coverage, and portrait sessions will be $99. This decision and pricing structure will allow me to continue to serve clients best.

    Some photos from Colorado! These were taken at Arapaho National Forest:

    Arapaho National Forest
    Arapaho National Forest
    Arapaho National Forest

    It has been a good break away from the boys and I am so grateful to both sets of their grandparents for taking good care of them for us.

    I haven’t taken a tremendous amount of photos, but it felt good to have my camera out in the mountains on Saturday.

    It’s also felt good to have some forced alone time to think. Think about life in general, think about the photography business, think about the future. And also time to just sit and not think, and just be.

    I’d forgotten how much I enjoy tinkering with a website. I couldn’t really do that in the same way with the Showit site since it was drag and drop. I was afraid when I started out the process on Friday night that maybe I’d forgotten, but I only had to look up how to do a couple of things. There’s even a dedicated subdomain just for the photography page of the site. Jared suggested the subdomain but I figured out how to do it and did it all by myself while he was at his conference, today.

    Now, the challenge will be to actually post content here. That will come. Occasionally, I am feeling like opening up, like I did with the “Making Peace with the Past” post. It took a lot to draft that post, and even more to leave it up.

    I’m not quite sure what has led me to be so guarded in recent years. Sure, there is a photography business to consider now, but I used to write with such abandon. I didn’t really care what people thought. Or maybe I did care, and I just wanted to say what I had to say anyway.

    Being guarded isn’t just an in-writing thing. I am guarded in person around most people who aren’t Jared. Jared is my safe person.

    I am working to change the being guarded thing. I want to let people in. It will just need to be a process. Baby steps.

    Love,
    Caroline

  • journals, graduation, and photography

    journals, graduation, and photography

    Porter in his isolette probably around August 30, 2006, in NICU Bay 20 at the University of Iowa Hospital

    Journals, Graduation, and Photography — I’ve been using Bear as my journal software for well over a year now (several years on and off, actually), but this weekend I picked up a hardbound paper journal to write in.

    I’ve noticed that my handwriting has become pretty atrocious. It was particularly bad when I had to write Porter’s senior letter to him in April. I never had just gorgeous handwriting, but it used to be pleasant enough. Now it sort of just looks like messy chicken scratch.

    It’s graduation week! Porter graduates on Friday, unless the weather looks bad and they move graduation to Saturday.

    Porter has an IB stole, a National Honor Society stole, a Spanish National Honor Society cord, a band cord, a dual enrollment cord, and an honor graduate cord. He has so much swag for his cap and gown! I’m so very proud of Porter.

    I keep saying this, and it remains true: I am struggling to establish a blogging routine. I am struggling with my identity as a blogger and photographer, truth be told. When it comes to journals, graduation, and photography, I’ve made a lot of quiet modifications to this site recently, and I’m happy with them, but I’ve struggled with creating more content. I struggle to sit down and write with an audience in mind. If I’m writing to my journal, I can literally write all day long.

    The situation is not helped by the fact that I am taking very few personal photos these days. My days are filled up with exercise, housework, and being a mom-chauffeur. These are not the things that make for much creative photography. Maybe I should bake more, or go for nature walks more, or just go on a random photo walk more. Yes, I know I should do all these things.

    Journals, Graduation, and Photography

    What is happening is an existential mid-life crisis, I know this. I’ve struggled to establish an identity for myself outside my previous professional life, and once I had sort of established myself as a blogger of sorts, I decided to take the plunge into professional photography. Semi-halfway, anyway.

    I am a scattered mess. I know this about myself.

    Jared is encouraging, constantly reassuring me that I am enough just as I am, without a proper job, without any particular aim or theme to my life. I am very lucky to have a husband who loves me as I am, and literally the only thing he wants from me is for me to be happy.

    So what is happening with photography? I am still a photographer. I have two weddings left on the calendar for the year in 2024, and I would happily take on more bookings if they come my way. However, I am equally happy to use my camera and lenses for personal use. It makes little sense to dissolve the photography business proper; my actual only business expenses are not that high all things considered. And I have shut down and re-opened the business enough to know that I will want to re-open again.

    Journals, graduation, and photography– all is well. I just need to keep telling myself this fact.

  • porter is graduating!

    porter is graduating!

    Porter is Graduating — We have a Senior!

    It is hard to believe in some ways that this little 4 lb 7 oz being that we brought home after 30 days in the University of Iowa Hospital NICU is almost ready to graduate from high school, and is well over 6 feet tall at this point.

    Porter is brilliant, and funny, and insightful, and wise beyond his years. I cannot tell you how proud I am to be Porter’s mother. Porter is Graduating!

    Porter plans to go to Georgia State University as a philosophy major. Though the religious studies department is a separate department at this point, religious studies was under the philosophy department in my time at GSU, so that philosophy department is sentimental to me. I took many philosophy classes in my time there as part of my religious major studies. I would never have dreamed that my child would consider my alma mater, much less the department of my major, in younger years.

    Porter will be a better philosopher than I was. He has the brain for it. I muddled through okay, but he will excel if he chooses to stick with philosophy permanently.

    Porter is Graduating — It is somehow fitting that the firstborn of a religious studies major and a philosophy and religion/ elementary education major should choose to major in philosophy. I am thrilled.