It's Valentine's Day! Happy Valentine's Day! Being wedding photographers together and running an L.L.C. together sometimes means we are all work and no play, so romance takes the back burner to the business. We go to buy each other gifts while we're together, we travel with our pets, we visit our families, and we forget to take much time to ourselves. Today was kind of like that... but with a twist. We finished designing a large physical wedding album, sent that to print, started updating our website & wedding magazine (it probably needs to be updated with literally 4 or 5 weddings at this point), and in general got to work on all of the things we need to finish in the next 2 weeks prior to us being gone for 6 days in Pennsylvania for the best photography conference in the nation. This year the conference (S.P.E.- Society for Photographic Education) frequented by many photography professors takes place in Philadelphia about 10 hours from us. That's the closest we've been to the traveling conference for the past 7 years that we've known about it. When living in Ohio, it was in San Francisco. When we lived in California, it was in Chicago, then Maryland, then New Orleans. By the time we moved back to the Midwest, it moved to Las Vegas and then Florida. It's finally just a couple states away, so we're making the road trip since it's our wedding photography low season and we are in need of being around and learning again from those formally educated in photography (those who also have degrees of BFAs, MFAs, and the like in Photography and those who are actually professors of the subject). Neither of us has been to Philadelphia with Jason actually having never been to Pennsylvania at all (homeland of his grandmother/ our only living grandparent), so we're excited for both the conference and the travel.
So... to get there we finally bought a $300 '80s Jayco pop-up trailer just a few days ago! We've actually been researching pop-ups for 2 or 3 years and have been looking for a used one under $1,000 that we can fix up, but nothing really fit the bill... until NOW! The snow was heavy (literally feet deep) where we went to purchase the trailer (that Jenny's parents alerted us to in our heavy season of wedding photography last fall), but we braved the elements to give the pop-up a look. The previous owners had it stored in a barn nearby in Michigan, so they actually didn't have it opened, up, or anything, but once we heard the low price they wanted we were sold. We'd also seen photos of it 4 or 5 months ago, so we knew it was fully functioning, not missing parts, and very well intact. We actually just camped for 3 days/ 3 nights with Jenny's REI tent in California in our old home city of Santa Barbara and next to Jenny's old home in the mountains last month AND had camped in Hocking Hills in Ohio back 5 months ago in September for 4 or 5 nights, so we've really had an amazing camping year. (We even got to stay in cabins twice in Indiana in the past year as well on our wedding photography trips to photograph clients' weddings which was a treat!)
Today- Valentine's Day- we registered our new traveling adventure Jayco trailer for Indiana! We have a new license plate, had to buy a new cord wire ($20 which was kindly ordered for us in Elkhart and we got it yesterday), and just tried out the electric- it works! We'll need a new tank of gas (to run what? probably the stove we guess) and we have a few other things to figure out, but we just opened it up in our house's parking area next to our garage and it's really fantastic. We've never set one up, but I watched a short few minute video online on Monday and it was a snap to set up. It was actually very WARM in there as well! (it is 45 degrees out, but feels much warmer in the pop-up.) Things are great and we are excited to revamp it this summer too. We even brought our dog Coco out since she'll be camping with us in it for 6 nights along with our cat Kevin and rabbit Marco. She loved the new digs and Jenny snapped a few photos of our new little Jayco!
**It has two full beds that pull out on the sides and a dining room table & 2 benches that can fold out into yet ANOTHER bed-! It has a stove with 2 burners, electric, gas, and even a sink as well. The lights work well and all we really have yet to do is hang the 6 curtains that give the 2 side beds privacy! Otherwise the entire thing is perfect and we figured out how to work all of it... while also finding some huge abandoned wasp nests in the storage areas... lol. Anywho enjoy the photos! ((If you want to follow along on our adventures in the future, we'll be Instagramming our adventures with Jayco in a couple weeks through Ohio and in Pittsburgh and Philly as #JennyJasonAndJayco ))
We hope you enjoy your Valentine's Day with your loved one(s) or have an amazing time Treating YoSelf this fine day! We're heading to go eat a pho meal together near our house because we haven't had pho in literally years. It's an exciting time, y'all. We already gave each other our gifts, so it's time for delicious food!
**An aside: Our hearts go out to those affected by yet another mass school shooting at a high school in Florida that happened today. Gun control laws should be stricter. This is not how anyone should spend Valentine's Day: Mourning the loss of their murdered high school student.