What a year!! 2021 was such a good year! Going through all these photos from the past year brought back so many happy memories! I couldn’t be more grateful for this job! I LOVE photography and having the opportunity to be creative, but the relationships that I form with my clients is truly the icing on the cake! I’m sure every photographer feels this way, but I really do feel like I have the most amazing clients!!
And while I absolutely love to look forward, dream, and set goals for the upcoming year. I’m always grateful for a time of year that gives us the opportunity to pause and look back at how far we have come. It’s important that before we cross over the threshold to a new year, we look back and thank God for all that He has led us through.
So, today I am sharing both my personal best of 2021 and BGP’s best of 2021!
Places I’ve Traveled
While making plans for traveling was much harder this year, we were still able to take a few nostalgic trips.
- Disney World: In January, we spent TEN days in Florida with the whole family, the parks were just opening after COVID and it was so much fun going while the parks were really slow and no lines! It’s crazy to think we really went during a time that will document history over the years. It will be neat over the generations for them to find these photos of us at Disney with all our mask on.
- Pinetop: Where I took my first ever sabbatical up north for a month over the Fourth of July! Our family has gone up north every single summer since I can remember… it’s such a nice quiet escape from the world for a bit! Lots of reading, naps, horseback riding, and ATVing!
- Pajarjo Dunes: Our grandparents always took our family and cousins up to Pajarjo Dunes every year, to spend a week on the beach. It’s been years since we gone back. AND everyone was able to make it!
- 7ten Retreat: A weekend away with Adam and some of my good friends from church! Lots of very happy memories made that weekend!
Books I’ve Read
In the past, I would have never called myself a reader! I always struggled with reading in school, but since I’ve graduated, I have fallen in love with it. It’s not the most impressive list, but they are all such good books, I want to go back and re-read them all, lol!
- The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: I read this up in Pinetop over the summer and could not get enough of it! I wrote TWO blogs sharing my takeaways (Book: The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry Takeaways and What I’ve been working on)
- Lineage of Grace: Absolutely LOVED this book! It’s biblical fiction and will give you such a better insight into what it looked like to be a woman in biblical times. It makes the Bible stories feel even more real.
- A Shepard looks at Psalm 23: An easy short read, but sooo good! It’s a deep dive into Psalm 23, with the insight of a Shephard. He clearly explains what David was referring to when he wrote it.
- The Story of the Other Wiseman: I read this years ago and it was so good I want to read it every Christmas. Again, Biblical fiction, but it’s the thought of what if there was another wiseman, who didn’t make it to see Jesus with the other three. It’s a story of him searching for Jesus and how God uses his life. It’s a really short read, I think it’s less than 30 minutes on Audible. Worth a read.
- The Christmas Carol: Just a fun Christmas read to get you in the mood.
- Started: Sons of Encouragement: Just started this book, also written by Francine Rivers, who wrote Lineage of Grace. It’s stories of 5 men in the Bible… so far, it’s very good!
- Started: The Life-Giving Home: Again, just started this book, but I love the way Sarah and Sally write. It’s super sweet and walks you through the things that make your house even more homey and welcoming!
- Currently reading: Sabbath: This book was mentioned in The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry and is a deep dive into the Sabbath, why God tells us to Remember and keep it, and all the good it does for us. It is so thoughtful and in depth, a really good book!
If you want to see more of my favorite book recommendations, check out the Shop the Blog page, where I’ve linked everything I mentioned in my blogs!
Revisiting Last Year’s Resolution – Delighting the Lord
Last year my new year’s resolution was simply to Delight the Lord, I wrote a full blog all about it. You can read it HERE. But here are my thoughts about it…
I’m glad this was my new year’s resolution, because every time it came to mind, it made me smile. Not because I was always great at this, but because the truth is He is delighted by me… I can’t mess it up and I can’t do anything to earn it. Sometimes that thought would come when I had a lot on my plate and it was just a simple reminder that I don’t need to do it all.
My goal is just simply to delight the Lord and He is already delighted by me… it’s really pretty freeing. He doesn’t want our works; he wants our heart. He wants a relationship with us. It would just refocus me and realign my priorities. Above all I want to spend time with the Lord, anything else that got done was a bonus. (I learned it’s much easier to say than to actually believe and live out)
Milestones, Highlights, and Blessings
- Family dinners every Sunday & lots of cooking – such a blessing to have everyone together one day of the week!
- All the coffee and lunch dates with my girlfriends this year!
- Another year of good health!!
- We launched BGP’s full website in June!!! Such a big milestone! Tons of work. TONS of list, but so happy that now all of BGP has a nice home on the internet where you can find everything from beautiful photos that tell you legacy to ways to live a more simplified and peaceful life!
- In July, I took my first ever sabbatical from BGP – really hard to step away and rest for a month, but so so worth it!
- Packed EIGHT shoe boxes for Operation Christmas Child in November! So exciting to think that eight kiddos received gifts this Christmas and are being introduced to Jesus!
- Grandparents came and visited for an entire month in November! SO nice to have them around all the time! We cherish every minute with them!
- In December, my parents bought a cabin up north!! We are beyond excited for all the memories that will be made up there over the years!
- Second shot with bunches of other photographers in Arizona! Loved getting to serve so many brides this fall!
- Publish 35 blogs this year… making this blog the 90th one to be published since I launched the BGP Blog back in March of 2020!
- AND I got to work with so many amazing clients this year, who I now call dear friends!! Couldn’t be more grateful! Here is a collection of my favorite photos from the year!
Thank you, Jesus, for such a wonderful year!! Here’s to 2022!!
