Picture it.....The Year was 2022....
Picture it….the year was 2022… I had just wiped some drool off my mouth as I was waking up from one of the wildest dreams I’ve ever had. If I had to title this dream it would be called 2020-2021…
A photo of Jace, Sienna and I greeting the first sunrise of 2020, smugly thinking we would never see this again, because we would be living in New Zealand. We were fools.
Seriously, though what the hell were the last two years about? My last blog was in April 2020 during the lockdown. I smugly thought I’m going to take advantage of this time and really be productive….right after I binge-watch Tiger King. And in retrospect, maybe it wasn’t the lockdown I should blame, it was really Carole Fucking Baskin’s fault(!), but I digress.
The last 2 years have been wild, 2020 started with the very real possibility that we were going to move to New Zealand for my husband’s new job, which he would be laid off by May 2020. Out of boredom, I got into plants, gardening, and skeletons. Skeletons you ask? Yes. From the time of lockdown until the end of the year I would create scenes in my front yard with these posable skeletons. You can go to my Instagram page of Quarantine Clark to see some of these creations. I don’t want to brag, but on a VERY slow news day, 9news came out and did a feature on me proving further to me, that I belong in the back of the camera and not in front of it.
Ew….David.
Adventure Day
Day at the lake.
Jace and Kate with Linus
Jace installed our “Zen Tub”. Basically, it’s a fancy bowl of water for cows that we converted into a pool-hot tub. Oh, Pandemic Purchases!! I continued to shoot weddings at a much slower pace and really enjoyed the time with my family as we boldly traveled from our downstairs couch to our outdoor couch and of course our favorite location bed, all while saying over and over, “I did not see THAT coming.” The only thing that changed was what exactly “THAT” was. Over the winter we enjoyed outdoor bundled happy hours freezing around the fire with neighbors all masked up. We valued social interaction over the value of having fingers as they would succumb to frostbite. (I’m kidding we still have all limbs)
Zen Tub, or fancy cow water bowl, you decide. Also known as a Stock Tank pool.
Social gatherings in any kind of weather.
Lucy, Sienna and Linus
Due to everyone having COVID, I hired Xander as my assistant for a wedding and he was AMAZING!
2021 provided us with a little bit more hope that we would return to normalcy. I opened the School of Kate, which I accepted the position of the founder, principal, and worst teacher in the world. I only had 1 student enrolled and that was my daughter Sienna. Parent-teacher conferences were awkward that semester. In the Fall of 2021 we shut down the School of Kate and Sienna enrolled into a new school, where the teachers were smarter than students. With the kids going back to school, Kate was left with more time on her hands and we decided to go for a new baby. Introducing Piggie Smalls, our new English Bulldog. And in the words of Bridesmaids, “3 dogs is A LOT of energy.”
I was feeling the sluggishness of 2020 and found myself napping a lot. We would find out that actually, I had won the lottery of having the rare condition of having non-cancerous tumors on my adrenal glands which were causing me to sleep for up to 3 straight days. It took an absurd amount of time to get that figured out since only one doctor in Colorado handles these cases but it’s all sorted now as I learn to handle my new healthy normal.
As we were figuring out my health, it forced me to put myself first and gave me permission to say no to things. I made the decision to end taking on family sessions so I could concentrate on my passion of photographing couples. In all honesty, I wasn’t really any good at family sessions. In 2021 I was lucky to shoot some amazing weddings, elopements with phenomenal couples that I will be sharing on here soon. Fall of 2021 was the best of all the 40 some falls in Colorado I’ve experienced.
Why am I telling you all this? Well, I guess because I never send out Christmas cards anymore but mostly to let you know, I am here, I am still shooting couples and I never stopped. I just had to live my story and not write about it for a while. I am really looking forward to taking on 2022. I’m not going to have any preconceived notions or intentions for 2022 other than gratitude. Like I’m grateful that you have actually read to this point!
So all aboard the Colorado Kate train! Hopefully, we don’t wreck, but I promise if we do, it won’t be without at least laughing until you cry. C’mon ride this train…and ride it.