Kassie's Beach: Photo Walk

I have been thinking long and hard and have come to the conclusion that having 2 blogs is way too much work. I was separating my photography from my personal blog. Well, I'll be separating them no longer! I am merging my blogs back together. I will keep my other blog for the future should I break into the photography business and need a place to promote my work. For now, I am just having fun and learning and I can do that over here at Kassie's Beach. I just found that I was not posting as often over here and I feel like I have been neglecting my first love and my first blogging friends.

I have been overwhelmed this month with Christmas prep, shopping, wrapping gifts, getting settled from our move, photography assignments from the online course I'm taking...you name it! Then we have been hit with a huge storm that is lasting forever. I like the rain but, seriously, come on already. It's supposed to stick around till Thursday even. It's messing with my photography. Our house has the WORST lighting so I prefer to shoot outside. Can't do it in the rain though. Grrrr!!!

Hubs got insanely sick this past week. He missed 3 days of work and had to go see his docs. He better not pass it to me! Last weekend we were flown into Nashville for a kidney transplant checkup(we have to go every 18 months to stay on a donor list). We asked them to fly us in a day early so we could rush up to Knoxville to see our friends. The VA was happy to oblige us. We got in Saturday afternoon, grabbed a rental car and made it to Knoxville around midnight. Sunday we got to attend our old church and say hi to tons of old friends. Then we had lunch with friends at Calhouns(we don't have them here in CA) then went to their house for the afternoon. It was great.

It started snowing while we were there so we hit the road for Nashville. What a crazy drive. It should have taken us 3 hours...instead it took 5 hours. We had upgraded our rental to a 4x4 suv and we drove the whole way using the 4x4. Scary!!!

Monday morning the visit with the transplant team went quickly so we had almost 4 hours to kill before heading to the airport. I asked if we could go to the Opryland Hotel to walk around the gardens(my husband sure loves me). It was gorgeous. The orchids were AMAZING! The waterfalls...!!! I posted a few pics down below but am also saving a few good ones for an upcoming scavenger hunt. Be on the lookout!

My diet is going well. I am on a time out this week for Christmas. What that means is I'm trying to keep my calories low but I'm not worrying about staying exactly on point. I don't expect to loose this week but I'm hoping to at least stay put. I may gain a few pounds in water as my salt intake went up a smidge. I am still right around 55 lbs. I plan to get back on the day after Christmas(New Years isn't about the food for me). I cannot wait to get down to my first goal and get my sticky fingers on my new netbook.

Okay, enough talk...here are my pictures for this post...

The snow was coming down VERY hard...for the whole 5 hour drive!

In many places you could not even see the roadway.

Bokeh from a Xmas tree at Opryland.

This was of a chandelier. I love it.

I used this last week in the scavenger hunt. It's the same tree from 3 pictures up framed by a huge wreath. We had to climb many stairs to get high enough for this picture.