The Ultimate Soda Test + Cute Babies + Smoke Bombs

Wonder WOMAN

Zach and I finally went and saw Wonder Woman last week.... and oh Gal Gadot I was in AWH the entire time. I think the word fierce must have been invented after someone heard about those amazons because holy cow there is nothing more fierce in this world... or in the super hero world. And Diana was just so nice and loving and was so strong and brave, every woman should want to be her when they grow up. Honestly this was probably the best super hero movie I had ever seen, everything about it was flawless. I often have critiques of female empowering movies putting down the male counterparts in order for the girls to look dope, but EVERYONE was dope! I couldn't believe how well it was made. I want to watch it a thousand times more.

After watching Wonder Woman we went over to Derrick's house to watch Rachel date a bunch of boys on the bachelor. I am still Team Will, even though I know in my heart that he won't win... they just belong together, you will see. 

Applications 5Ever

On Wednesday the task of the day for me and Zach was to fill out a bunch of housing applications... and by a bunch I mean two... but that was stressful enough. Zach went with his mom earlier in the week to look at houses while I was working, and there were two houses that were satisfactory that we got the applications for that were both very inexpensive. I would like to vote that you don't fill out applications for these things and you just meet the people in person to talk over life's happenings and what not. I feel like a paper portrays me terribly haha. Luckily we were approved for one house and the other house was super sketch with the application fee so we ended up not getting it. Sadly that was the one that Zach liked the most, so we will have to keep hoping for something better.

Babies

Patrick Taylor was one of the coolest missionaries in the Tucson YSA 3rd ward, and he and his cute little family came down to Arizona for the week to visit the good ol' ATM where both him and his wife served. I was the luckiest person in the whole world because he asked if I would be available to take some photos of his cute little family while they were in Arizona. I don't know how I could possibly pass up taking pictures of twin babies, so we figured out a time and a place and it was awesome! 

I sadly never met his wife while she was serving in Tucson because she never served in a YSA ward, but she is just the sweetest and nicest person, and the cutest mom to these babies. It's crazy to think that just a couple years ago they were in Tucson serving their missions and now they are the parents of TWO children.

While we were driving to the venue Patrick and I were recalling his days in third ward and he said that the first tim he and Elder Hall were invited to eat dinner at the 1320 Beezies abode, Elder Hall warned him and said "so these girls are kind of crazy... they're loud and fun and really like object lessons" that just made me crack up. Because we definitely were all of those things hahaha.

Here are some of my favorites from their adorable shoot... sorry I couldn't just choose a few:

So sad yet so cute

Such brotherly love

The Soda Addict

Oh you thought Zach and I were addicted to soda? Well you clearly have never met McKenzie. After taking the photos last night with her, I treated her to some Sodalicious for helping me out. While we were there I asked her what her favorite soda place is, and she really was unable to answer the question. So obviously the natural thing to do in this situation is to try the same soda from every single soda shop to see which one rises above the rest. So on Saturday McKenzie, my mom, Avery, Zach and I set out in the morning to test the equivalent of each stores Dirty Diet Coke (Diet Coke with lime and coconut). For you silly people that don't know the soda shops in the valley, we went to Soda Rush, Sodalicious, Fiiz and the Soda Shop. I of course documented the adventure:

contemplating the flavor

Her reaction to Soda Rush hahha

Discussing the balance of coconut and lime

And now here are the results

It was easy for her to choose that the Soda Shop was first because of how fresh the lime tasted, and that Soda Rush was last because it didn't taste as natural (well as natural as a Dirty Diet Coke can taste), it was very tough for her to decide the 2nd and 3rd place slots though because Sodalicious and Fiiz were very similar. I think Fiiz ended up placing second because Sodalicious gave us a cup without a logo on it, which does not make for good photos, smh.

Smoke Bombs

A few weeks ago I had an epiphany to do a photoshoot with Sadie's floral business with SMOKE BOMBS. Sadie was super down, and she had a lot of extra flowers from a wedding she was doing so we ended up doing the shoot on Saturday. Zach and I went hunting for the smoke bombs in the afternoon (in the awful awful heat). We got some of the small smoke bombs that last like 15 seconds, and then some larger ones that were supposed to last 45 seconds. 

McKenzie, Sadie & Parker were my models and Avery came along for the adventure. We first went to Butcher Jones, to do some photos by the water... but there was a whoooole lot of people there, so we went down a trail a little bit (with a whole lot of horse poop that Avery was not very happy about) and did a couple smoke bombs there, and then we made our way up back the road and stopped by some nice prickly pear cactuses for some more shots, and then went by the Salt River for the remainder of the shoot. There were definitely some interesting things with these smoke bombs. They sparked WAY more than any smoke bombs I had used in the past (I am eternally sorry for the effects that had on Sadie's wedding dress #crycrycry). The big ones also produced waaaaay more smoke than I expected hahahah and the first shot really just engulfed them in smoke... they may be coughing for the rest of the year but at least the photos turned out cool right ? hahah. 

So now for all y'alls enjoyment:

We were racing the sun for a lot of this shoot so it was high intensity and some stress haha but I am super happy with how they turned out!

When Trev Comes to Town

You may recall that Trev moved to Tucson, sad sad. But he came up to the valley on Saturday and we had a nice fam party (minus Cob because he is partying it up in California) at Parker's parents house. We went swimming in their very warm pool, ate some fruit snacks, played Super Smash Bros and of course ended the evening with a trip to Taco Bell late at night. One of these days we will get allll of the fam together and it will be a rockin' good time.

So here is an update on life... I finally gave in and made an Instagram account for my photography. I wanted to vomit out all my insides when I did it and thought about deleting it at least 30 times on Sunday... but alas it is still there, so y'all can go give me a follow @sydrichphoto and tell all your friends to hire me because yknow I am going to start paying rent soon.