Nick and Jen Lloyd

This weekend was the D.C. Shootoff, a photo competition for military and DOD photographers held near Washington D.C. Friday we had lectures all day from famous photographers and developers such as Martin Gisborne from Apple’s Aperture team, Bill Putnam, Greg Hren (a famous commercial photographer), Bill Frakes (a staff photographer for Sports Illustrated with some amazing work), and Micheal Williamson from the Washington Post and three time Pulitzer Prize winner. I really enjoyed what they all had to say, especially Micheal Williamson. After the lectures a topic for the competition was pulled out of the hat. The rules are that within 24 hours you turn in 3-5 images that tell a story. This year’s theme was “Commitment.”

After thinking about a lot of different ideas for this topic and talking to friends and family, my Mom suggested I photograph some nuns, but none of the convents would allow me to come, so Jen suggested the missionaries and I thought it was brilliant. My photos ended up getting Second place in my division, which is a pretty big deal for me. Here are the photos:

“Illustrative of Mormon missionaries Jason Anderson and Joseph Broadhead studying their scriptures before beginning their day in their apartment in Severn Maryland on March 14th, 2009. Mormon missionaries devote two years of their lives to to teaching people about their religion.”

“Illustrative of Mormon missionaries Joseph Broadhead and Jason Anderson riding their bikes in Severn Maryland on March 14th, 2009.”

“Illustrative of Mormon missionaries Joseph Broadhead and Jason Anderson conversing with Jennifer Lloyd at a home in Severn Maryland on March 14th, 2009.”

“Illustrative of Mormon missionaries Joseph Broadhead and Jason Anderson walking from house to house in Severn Maryland on March 14th, 2009.”

Anyway, I won some cool stuff including a bag from Nikon, a $50 gift certificate from B&H which is a website that has all kinds of photo equipment, a photo holder, and some fine art photo paper. Also, the D.C. Shootoff T-shirt was pretty cool this year. Here’s a photo of me with my swag:

It was a fun and informative weekend.

Speaking of missionaries….Jen and I are also excited that her brother Tyson gets back from his mission to the Phillipines on the 30th of this month. Her other brother Cody leaves for his mission to the Ukraine on July 15th! Yay for missionaries!

One year ago yesterday Nick and I were married in Columbia, South Carolina. Since only his parents were there to witness it, let me paint a picture for you. Nick was graduating from basic training. His parents and I attended the graduation ceremony in the morning then headed for the courthouse to get our marriage license. Then, we went to this lady’s apartment and she married us in the lobby of the building while wearing a lovely outfit of pink velor!

Nick and I spent 4 hours together, then he had to go back to the barracks. The next morning, I took a taxi and met him at the airport where I said goodbye to him for the next three months.
I then rented a car and went on “our honeymoon” to Charleston SC, very cute town, too bad for Nick that he missed it!

When I think back to a year ago it makes me laugh…what an awkward situation! I was nervous to tell people that I had gotten married because it was so last minute, we pretty much eloped! I always said I would elope but I never really believed it! But having been around other military families over the past year, I’ve learned that it’s not that uncommon to get married quickly and not see each other for awhile…and to have a reception nearly a year later.

Anyhow, it’s been a great year, we’ve seen and done so many neat things here on the East coast together, furnished and decorated our first home together, learned how to carpool, learned how to get along day to day, found out funny quirks about each other that we never knew, laughed, cried, got a puppy…and in May we’ll have a little bundle of joy to turn our world upside down. Happy one year anniversary to us! I love you baby!

Since I am now officially into the THIRD TRIMESTER I think it’s time for a prego update! Trimester number two flew by with no problems! I got my energy back, I lost that nasty nauseousness and I started to look like I was pregnant and not just fat! But now it’s over and it’s time for me to turn into a balloon! Lately I’ve almost forgotten that I’m pregnant because my tummy popped out really fast right after the holidays (all that good food!) but has stayed the same since. So i’ve gotten really used to the stage I’m in. But I have a feeling it’s gonna change soon. Crazy that it is now less than three months till our house will be a lot noisier! We can’t wait!

Other news…I have finally found a job! I tried so hard for so long to get a job in recreational therapy and it just wasn’t happening, so I finally started looking elsewhere. I am now working at the daycare here on the base. I’m not sure how all the bending down and sitting in itty bitty chairs or on the floor with the kids is going to be as I get bigger…but it’s a paycheck!

Nick is gone this week doing some training…I miss him a ton and I’m beginning to wonder how this whole deployment thing is gonna work for us. Zoey misses him too…I have the most ridiculous dog! She has been sitting at the front door whining since Nick left…what a goofball.

Our one year anniversary is coming up this Sunday! I can hardly believe it’s been a year now! And we finally got my beautiful wedding ring fixed to the right size so I can wear it! I love my ring…Nick’s family friend, Doug Peterson, makes custom jewelery in Salt Lake City and does a beautiful job, take a look:

I recently decided to start making custom vinyl signs. For right now I am ordering my vinyl from a girl from my hometown, if all goes well I may just invest in a vinyl machine of my very own! I’m super excited about this new venture and hopefully people will like what I do. Vinyl signs are the latest thing in home decor and make any home look more like home! So check it out, let me know what you think!

SO! If you live in the Baltimore/Washington DC area, or know someone who does, spread the word! Check out my new blog…www.signsofhome.blogspot.com
I will be posted all of my latest projects on the blog, but you can also make custom orders (it’ll just take a little longer).

This last week was “restaurant week” in Baltimore. Ton’s of restaurants participate and charge only $30 for a three course meal. So of course, we went through and picked out the most expensive Italian restaurant in the Little Italy section of town and decided to celebrate valentine’s day early (since Nick will be gone for a training on Valentine’s day anyways.)
It was of course, wonderful. But there are a few little things about fancy pants restaurants that I don’t favor. It seems, that the more expensive the food is, the less you get of it. Normally when I think Italian, I think a BIG plate of food. While this was solved by the fact that there were three courses (I don’t think I’ve EVER had three courses at a restaurant!) it is still a little annoying to look down at your sparse plate. The other funny quirk about expensive restaurants is that everyone is very quiet, and the tables seem to be extra long. So if you want to talk to your significant other way over there, you can almost guarantee that everyone around you can easily hear you. Not to say that I like the really rowdy restaurants, but a little noise puts me at ease.
So the moral of the story is…a hoity toity place is fun every now and then, but I think I’m just too “country” to go there too often. But yes, the food was oooh so good. Happy early Valentine’s day!

So we saw the movie “the curious case of Benjamin Button” the other day, it’s about this man who grows from old to young. (They make him look like a really old and ugly baby!) It was a good movie and there was this one scene in it where they reviewed how an accident happened. This woman was hit by a car. All because a woman was running late for work because she had to stop and get something but the girl who worked there wasn’t there cuz her boyfriend broke up with her the night before and the woman going to work went to catch a taxi, and the taxi was a few minutes behind because he stopped to get some coffee and a truck pulled out in front of them which slowed them down and then the taxi driver wasn’t paying attention and hit this woman (something to that effect) Basically saying that all the little things lined up just right for this accident to happen and had one little thing been different, it wouldn’t have happened. This scene has been on my mind this weekend as we have had our own little series of unfortunate events.

It began on Friday. Nick lost his military ID while we were at the hospital in Bethesda for my appointment. Then Saturday night, we were running some errands and Nick really wanted to trade in one of his Xbox games for a different one. But we couldn’t find parking at the mall, so I said I wanted to go home and he could get it later. So, later that night Nick decided it was time to go get that game. (Men have such one track minds…he can’t stop thinking about something until he gets it.) So he goes to get his game. When he comes back on base, he has to show his ID. As he’s pulling up the guard working, gets off work and the new one comes on. He shows his civilian ID, having lost his military ID. If you don’t have a military ID they always want to see your car registration as well. (They hadn’t checked this before b/c I was with him so my military ID got us on base no problem). It just so happens that the registration for the car is in my purse, because I’m trying to work out which state I’m supposed to register in (and no one seems to know, so there is quite a lapse of time in our registration…Nick having encouraged me to wait and wait and wait, why did I listen?). This particular guard was not as nice as most and decided she should call the MP’s (military police). So the MP shows up and looks up our registration, realizes it is expired and decides to go on a power trip. He handcuffs my husband, throws him in the back of the cop car very rudely and calls a tow company to take our car away. Nick did nothing to provoke him and explained to him that we were trying to figure out where to register the car. So Nick calls me from a jail cell needing a ride…but the only car we have has been towed. I pick him and our lovely fine from the oh so kind MP up and we call the tow company. They are not open until Monday. So today (Monday) I had a week long class that was starting that I wanted to take and I had to be there at 8 am. We decide we’ll pick the car up on lunch break. So Nick calls in the morning to renew the registration over the phone…they won’t let him. He comes to get me and says we can’t renew the registration over the phone because my credit card has my married name and the car is in my maiden name. So I call them and they let me. (But we’ve lost 15 mins of my lunch break doing this). We run to the tow yard. It is in the scariest part of town and is a complete HOLE. I was scared our GPS would no longer be there, and of course they put up the nice little sign about how they are not responsible for damage or theft. Come to find out though, they don’t take cash. SO we have to run to an ATM, get some cash and go back…pay WAY too much for the car that shouldn’t have been towed in the first place. I was an hour late getting back to my class.

What a wonderful day! Any little thing could have gone differently in the beginning and it wouldn’t have turned out so badly. Nick talked to a different MP today and he said that he would not have towed our car…he thought it was ridiculous. Had Nick not lost his military ID, had there been parking at the mall, had I just not worried about where to register the car and just got it done, it could have been different. Everything lined up just right and mixed in with a little of our own stupidity and we’re out a decent chunk of change that we could have gone on a nice vacation with. AUGH.

Does anybody else ever feel like nothing works out quite right for them? I don’t mean to complain, but I feel like that is the story of my life these days! I’m trying to be positive!!! It’s just not working too well.

Sorry so wordy…had to vent.

So I went to the Inauguration concert on Sunday night and also to the actual Inauguration on Tuesday and got some amazing photos…check it out!

Yes, I was actually this close. It was amazing! There were sooo many people there, those of you that watched it on TV have an idea, but it was hard to move. It took me an hour and half to walk three blocks because there were so many people. For more pictures of the inauguration check out our flickr link on the right.

I’ve always thought that the holidays should be a little later in the winter. It seems like they are right at the beginning and then they’re over and you’ve got nothing but yucky winter for a few months. Which in Maryland apparently consists of gloomy skies and rain…no snow to make it at least a little pretty!

Before heading home for the holidays we made a trip to DC to see the national Christmas tree…it was pretty! We thought more of DC would be decorated as well, but it turns out it really wasn’t.

Then we headed home for our wonderful holiday vacation to both our parents’. Nick got to experience being an Uncle for the first time now that we’re married…below is a picture of our nephew playing in the snow.

Our holidays were wonderful! We flew into Spokane where my parents picked us up. We spent the week of Christmas with my family. I love Christmas as my parents’ house because they have a Christmas tree farm in their front yard, so there’s always someone out there cutting down a tree, it’s quite festive. It was nice because it was the first chance Nick has really gotten to spend some time with my family. And oh boy did we spend time together! There was no escaping it! We were snowed in half the time; Northern Idaho has been all over the news for the amount of snow they got this Christmas. The picture below is my Dad trying to dig us out…it took ALL day!

But lucky for us, the roads did miraculously clear up and we were able to make the drive down to Utah. We spent the week of New Years with Nick’s family. We had Cafe Rio 3-4 times within the week and Nick got to go skiing. (Grrrr. not me cuz I’m prego!) It was nice to be in Utah, to be home for Nick, and semi-home for me (I spent my college years mostly there).

Then to top it all off, that weekend we had our LONG awaited reception! We got married in February in South Carolina. We spent a few hours together and then had to part ways due to Nick’s training and my job commitment. Then in May, I moved here to Maryland. But Christmas was the first time we’ve both been back home since we got married so we decided better late than never and we had a reception. It did feel a little strange to wear a wedding dress while five months pregnant…but I was determined to get some nice wedding pictures and have a semi-normal wedding experience. We had a lot of people there and over all it was a success! Since it was in Utah, my mother-in-law Julie had to do a lot of the footwork to make sure everything worked out, plus she made my amazing cupcake tower! I’m so lucky to have great in-laws! Thanks to everyone that came to support us! Nick wasn’t all that excited to have a reception but ended up really enjoying it! I’ll get some pictures up when I get them from the photographer.

And here is the first belly shot! (And I AM wearing clothing, you just don’t see it in this shot 🙂 This is my belly at approx 23 wks and I’m pushing it out as far as I can for dramatic effect!

In honor of the gender of our baby (which we found out right before Christmas) I have changed the color of our background to this lovely blue…that’s right! It’s a BOY!

Oh and by the way, try out my new widget on the right there. Just click “get name” to see lots of different names…some of them are weird, but let me know if you see any good ones! (Nick and I can’t seem to agree on a boy name!)

We just had our first snow here on the east coast (the first one that stuck to the ground anyhow). It wasn’t much but it was enough that we decided that our poor shivering beagle needed a jacket. I don’t usually like the little doggy sweaters so I was really excited when we found this cute pink jacket and it even has a hood! Ok, so maybe we’re a little ridiculous about our dog, but it’s fun! We tried to make the jacket look red and created a cute Christmas card too…(below)