In June of 2018, my family went to Yosemite National Park as part of our family summer vacation. I loved every second of it! Yosemite has always been a dream of mine to visit, and I cannot wait to go again someday!

I took many pictures and video clips while there, but never got around to editing anything. After almost 2 years of saying I'd get it done, I finally did it! It was such a joy to make this film and to relive the fun we had and to see again the beauty we saw! Quarantine has certainly made me nostalgic for getting out and for seeing other people! 

Hope you enjoy a little look at Yosemite as well as Sequoia National Park!
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I know I've mentioned it on my blog before--my family loves to ski! I didn't grow up skiing, but my husband did, and he taught the boys how to ski while I practiced. Well, we're all getting pretty good at it now (proud brag moment..!)
This year, my twins qualified for the Utah and Idaho 5th grade passes, so we explored 2 resorts in ID and 4 in UT, as well as one resort in WY. We had a lot of fun trying new places!
With the help of two cameras, my husband and oldest two boys we got some great video footage of our season! I had a lot of fun putting this little video together, and I dare say it's my favorite film I've made to date! Come join us on the slopes for a little virtual ski time!

It's really amazing how much life has changed in the last month. This time last month, everything was pretty normal for us still. COVID-19 was on the horizon, but we weren't in quarantine yet--school was still in session; everyone was crazy stocking up on toilet paper, water, flour and canned goods; we were still allowed to go to parks and stores.

​But everything is the complete opposite now. School is all online, parks are closed, stores are still open but limiting the number of people inside at one time as well as limiting purchases on sought-after items. I even found mounds of TP and water the last time I braved going in! 

I live in a pretty wide-open area. The country. It's a great place to live right now because I can get out any time I want to! But, we do get kind of bored of not going anywhere else. Luckily, the state parks in Utah are open to residents of that county, and thankfully we have a state park in our county. It's a nice little bay off of the Great Salt Lake, full of fresh water. We decided to open up our trailer and spend the last night of our spring break (at home) going somewhere besides our yard. And boy, was it nice! 

With it being prime bird migration season right now, I had so much fun watching them in their habitat. I also used my long telephoto to get some pretty images of the budding spring foliage, and tried some horizontal panning. 

Boy, was March interesting or what? On March 1st, life was pretty normal, but by March 31st we had been quarantined for 2 weeks, and we were getting pretty used to our new normal. This corona virus has truly turned our world upside down! But life goes on, and I documented the shift between old normal and new normal. Here's a little look at our March, 2020.

Another installment of Hanging Out With the Hamson's is here! February was a lot of fun packed into a shorter month (but one more day than normal with leap year!). I honestly didn't get as many video clips as I'd hoped, but enough to put together a little look at what we did. 

In February, I went to Grand Teton National Park with my dear friend, Kristen. I only live 4 hours from the Tetons and I've visited it many times--but never ever have I been in the winter! When Kristen texted me back in November about possibly going with her in the winter, I immediately said "yes!" It was so fun to look forward to exploring the Tetons in a new to me season, and I must say, I was impressed! In fact, I had so much fun that when I got home, I told my husband that we need to take our boys there in the winter, because they would love it!

So for anyone who's like me and has ben to the Teton's in the summer, here's what made winter so different.

The sunrises were later, which made getting up for them a bit easier! (Though we were still awake before 6 am every morning.) But the early sunsets meant we could shoot sunset, then head back to Jackson for dinner and be in bed at a decent hour. I like my sleep! 

Most of the interior park road is closed, so we spent time exploring more of the outer areas of the park that we don't see much of during the summer. In particular we went to Gros Ventre canyon area a few times, shot around the Gros Ventre river, explored the area behind the elk refuge, hiked in the snow to Taggart Lake, snowshoed to the Cunningham Cabin and stopped at spots on the main highway we'd never stopped at before. 

I got to experience some cool things too! We were able to hear wolves, and even spotted a couple of them! They were sadly pretty far away, and even with my telephoto they look like little dots. :( But we also got to hear some coyotes hunting, and saw one eating on an two day old elk carcass. I never thought I'd want to watch a wild animal eat, but it was fascinating to see! We saw some trumpeter swans, a sage grouse, a couple of moose, a fox and a family of bison. I'd never seen the elk on refuge because they're only there in the winter, but that was pretty cool to see too! There was a lot more wildlife that I don't normally get to see in the summer, since the animals were all down in the lower elevations. (We see plenty of elk, moose and bison in the summer but not much else.)

I can't forget to mention the snow! There was so much of it! Even when we were wearing our snowshoes, we would sink down sometimes to mid-calf. Without the snowshoes, we would sometimes sink in up to our hips! It was crazy how deep it was, and it really made everything so white and beautiful! Along with the snow though came the colder temperatures. Don't ever go there in the winter unless you have some serious winter gear--one morning shooting the Milky Way, it was 16 below zero! We stayed close to the car so we could easily get in and warm up as necessary!

Overall, the experience was an amazing one and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. I'm so grateful that I live close enough to visit this majestic park a few times a year--only now I'm going to be adding winter to those visits! 

Have you been to the Teton's in the winter? What did you experience?

I love drive by shootings!

There...I said it! But of course, my idea of a drive-by shooting is taking a picture as I'm driving down the road. Well, not me driving, but as a passenger. We love to ski in our family, and living close to the mountains and the famous Utah snow means many trips through beautiful scenery a few times a month. Somedays are overcast and gloomy, some days have bluebird skies, and sometimes we get super lucky on the way home with an amazing sunset view! The problem is, that in the canyons, it's not always possible to stop and pull over, even for a quick picture. Add that to the fact that if we stopped every single time I wanted to, we wouldn't get very far very quickly!  (All of these images were taken on different days in different canyons!)

Of course, the view brings serenity, but the fact that we have four very noisy and rambunctious boys in our car doesn't mean that we any have peace and quiet. Fortunately, last year I discovered how to find serenity while we drive (and I kick myself for not finding it sooner)...audio books! We love reading in our house, and it was the perfect way to "read" and have some quiet! We are currently on the last book of the Harry Potter series, which we've all read, but it's fun to hear the voices the narrator does. It makes long rides something to look forward to, and it makes them quite peaceful and serene so I can look out the window and enjoy the beautiful scenery. And get a drive-by shooting in! 

Do you do anything in your car to enjoy some peace and quiet? I'd love to have some more ideas as we are going on a big road trip this summer!

​The Serenity Project is a monthly group project I do with some of my lovely photography friends. To find more serenity in your day, please continue through the circle! Up next is Iris Nelson, Metro Phoenix Photographer. 

In 2018 I made a family film each month of just the normal, regular stuff we did everyday. Some of it was fun, some of it was boring, some of it new, some of it mundane...but it was such a good look at what our lives and home were like that month. By the end of 2018 I was honestly burned out--we were in the thick of homeschooling for our first year and it was wearing on me. So in 2019 I decided to scale back and make a monthly film, but I kind of got out of the habit and didn't get many done...oops. So, I made a goal for 2020 to make a monthly family again. So without further ado, here's a look at some stuff we did in January!

It's always amazing to me how quickly kids can grow up! My own children seem to grow too quickly, but it seems that my friend's and neighbor's children grow up even quicker! Case in point--L is a senior this year and will soon be on her way to the "real world", but I almost had a heart attack when her mom asked me to take her senior pictures, because I've known L since she was about 6 years old when they moved to my neighborhood. And I seriously cannot believe how fast that decade went!

L is not only beautiful, but she's talented! She's a fantastic pianist and plays the organ in church, she runs track (the 200m is her favorite) and she is daring and brave--she competes in the skeleton, as in riding a small sled face first down an ice track on a mountain. Just thinking about that makes me want to cry, because there's no way you'd ever catch me doing something like that! I'll also add that she's an amazing big sister, fabulous friend and a kind-hearted person. If everyone in the world were like her, the world would be a lot better place for sure!

This past summer, my husband, 4 boys, sister, niece and nephew drove to Vegas, and hopped on a plane to Anchorage! We went to go visit my sister and her family, as well as my parents who are there until March of this year. I did post a little bit about taking some alone time to find Serenity in Alaska, but other than that, I didn't post much about our trip here. Although Alaska is beautiful landscape country, I had two problems in finding time to go out to shoot landscapes. #1 was the near 20 hours of daylight...it's hard to go chasing sunset or sunrise when they happen at 11 pm and 4 am everyday. #2 was the fact that there was so much family and honestly I wanted to spend the majority of my time capturing memories of our time together. So that's what I did. While I got a handful of some awesome pictures (most are in the Serenity post), I focused mostly on making a family film of our time there so we could look back and remember the fun we had! So without further ado, here's a longish (4 minute) look at what we did in beautiful Alaska! 

Have you had the chance to visit Alaska yet? If so, where did you go and what did you do?