About a week ago I got a text message from my cousin Amy saying that she was getting married in a week. Her and Sean were supposed to get married in June but because of Sean's interest in a job in the Air Force he was going to have to leave for training in March. Amy and Sean decided to get married before he left. My mom called me about 2 minutes after i read the text message to let me know. Because of my new found interest in photography I thought it would be a great experience to try shooting the wedding for them since they had to cancel with their original photographer. I really needed a new flash for my camera because the little pop-up flash wouldn't come close to getting the job done. I went to Christian Photography and picked up the Canon 430EX Speedlite Flash.

The flash is pretty nice. Its got all the normal functions that any external flash should have. Its got a left-to-right and up-and-down swiveling head, pop up filter to spread the light really wide for wide angle lenses, and it can be a slave flash used with my pop-up flash. It also has a really nice setting called second curtain sync where the flash will go off right at the end before the shutter closes. Its nice for long exposures where you want the bluriness and the crazy lights but you want the object/person in perfect focus. So yeah, so far, I like it.

I left Des Moines friday afternoon and met some family at the church so i could get an idea for the lighting and try out a couple test shots to see what I needed to do. The wedding was on saturday and everything went great. I took over 500 photos and after looking them over I kept about half of them. We went out for dinner afterwards and that night I went out to my dads to stay the night. We were sitting around visiting when Aaron called me.


So Aaron headed over and my brother and Anna showed up right before he got there. We all hung out for a while and decided to head into Galesburg to check out a couple bars. My cousin was in town from Dubuque, IA and he mentioned wanting to do something that night so i gave him a call too. We all met up at The Pub and had a beer. After that we headed to a new martini bar called Olives where BJ, Aaron, and I immediately went next door for a beer instead. After that we all moved to McGillacuddy's before calling it a night. On the way home my dad, Aaron, and I were all in Aarons Taurus and decided we were hungry so we went back to my dads and ate a bunch of lasagna at 2am.

The next morning I left Galesburg pretty early so i could get home in time for our first broomball game. We played the Ice Hounds in half ice and full ice. We beat them 6-2 in full ice and 1-0 in half ice. w00t!