This morning I woke up a bit in a funk! (Well actually, I woke up feeling pretty darn good because we slept in a bit and woke up thinking It’s Valentine’s Day and I rolled over to the sweetest Valentine ever, Ryan, and gave him a kiss!)- but then I started watching the Today Show and my mood quickly changed! I had no idea at the time what was going on… but after Ryan pulled it out of me, I realized that I was letting society get to me! All of the roses and chocolate talk about Valentine’s day was making me feel guilty because I had not planned anything “special” for Ryan on this day! Seriously- I let society get to me! :( Ugh!

Anyway, after turning the TV off and taking some quiet time for myself, I realized that I had a choice. I could continue to throw myself a pitty party and feel bad for myself because I didn’t do anything “special” for Ryan for Valentine’s Day or I could listen to my heart and feel confident that the love Ryan and I share everyday doesn’t need to be recognized on this one day out of the year with roses and chocolates! We had already discussed that because our lives have been a bit crazy recently, a dinner date in is everything we wanted for today!

I realized today that I LOVE Valentine’s Day… there are a few reasons: 1. Because this is the day Ryan proposed to me 7 years ago! (Wow… 7?!? ;) ) And 2. Because Valentine’s Day is a day to Celebrate Love! (with or without chocolates and roses)

I have made a clear decision today to make today about LOVE! Whatever that may look like to you! Even though the TV and magazine’s tell you it should be about roses and chocolate, I hope you make today about LOVE! Celebrate the LOVE that you have. Take the time to recognize the LOVE that surrounds you… your friends, your family, your significant other, and/or even the random strangers that exude love that come into your life on days you need it most! Celebrate that!!!… because that is so much better than any chocolate I have ever had! (And that says a lot, because I love chocolate!)

As you are celebrating, we hope you will take a minute to recognize the love that surrounds you by nominating an inspiring marriage for The AMAZING Marriage Project. This can definitely be your own marriage!!…. or anyone else’s too! (Please note: These couples may or may not be celebrating with roses and chocolate today! And that is totally OK! ;) )

This iPhone photo below is just a little glimpse of some love that we encountered while we were in the Dominican Republic last week and we are definitely celebrating that love today! (So much more on this trip to come soon! ;) )

Happy Valentine’s Day friends! With or without roses and chocolates… we pray you have a lot of love that you are celebrating today! ;)

You know when you walk down the street and you come across the sweetest couple walking hand in hand and giggling and laughing at each other? Sometimes they are an older couple helping each other step-by-step and other times they are younger and basically pulling each other across the street. Either way, they always seem to have a zest for life and most certainly exude love that adds an extra beat in our hearts! Those moments when we witness the love that these couples share always has a way of stopping us in our tracks and reminding us to slow down and soak in this life!

As we mentioned with our What If post on Monday, we have had this idea brewing for awhile, but we finally decided to take some action and start The AMAZING Marriage Project. We want to photograph married couples who love unconditionally. We want to hear their stories and learn about the good and the not so good moments that they have used to learn what unconditional love is all about! We want to take the knowledge that we gain from these AMAZING couples and share it with the world. To be honest, we are not quite sure what the end product will be… maybe a book, a documentary, or even just a blog series. But what we do know is that we are SO eager to learn, to document these AMAZING stories, and to share everything with you!!!

Here is where we need your help! We are looking for 15-25 married couples that would be willing to allow us to photograph them, interview them, and even shoot some video of them in an effort to document their love story in this moment in time! (We have asked our good friend Jeremy Mitchell of Jeremy Mitchell Cinema to help us out with the video portion! ;) Whoop Whoop!) We are looking for couples who have been married for 1 day up to 100 years (ok, we know the longest married couple has been married for about 80 years… but we can dream right?! ;) ). We are hoping to photograph couples that may have gone through some tough times in their lives (who hasn’t right?) but have chosen LOVE and HAPPINESS above all else. We would love to find couples who are so excited to share their stories in hopes to make a difference in the lives of others!

Hopefully at this point you are thinking…. YES, I know the perfect couple for this project. Now go nominate them! ;) Please. It is super easy! Click Here. Don’t worry, the couples will not be asked to pay anything. This is a personal passion project for us and this is just one way that we feel like we can touch the lives of others and learn more about what goes into an AMAZING marriage! After a short nomination period, a selection committee will help us decide which couples to choose for The AMAZING Marriage Project. More details can be found on The AMAZING Marriage Project Website.

What if? It’s often a question we ask ourselves but not one we normally take very seriously. That is until we attended the What If conference this past week in the Dominican Republic.

How often do you ask yourself what if on a daily basis? What if I didn’t have to go to work in this job I don’t like. What if we stopped worrying about what everyone else thinks of our idea? What if we had more time?

For just this moment, stop worrying about what could be done and actually go do it. Turn those What Ifs into action. Make all your dreams a reality.

We will be sharing a lot more about our experience during the What If conference throughout this week but for now we wanted to share just a few of our What Ifs. One of the biggest What Ifs and amazing life lessons we learned was What If we let ourselves be more vulnerable? So with that said, we are going to be a little vulnerable and share some of our What Ifs and not worry about if you think they are crazy or stupid. Because if they sound crazy and stupid, then we must be doing something right! :) And if any of our What Ifs resonate with you, be sure to let us know, we’d love your support!

What If we lived to give in every single thing that we do. In every single interaction we have. What if we shared ourselves with everyone with such amazing love everyday and not just in the hardest and darkest times of need?

What if we started an AMAZING marriage project to photograph 15 – 25 happily married couples. What if we did it for free? What if we had people nominate their favorite couples? What if we documented it in such a way that we could learn the secrets of an AMAZING marriage and then passed it along to world?

What if we woke up and chose happiness everyday? Not because it was easy, but because if was a better alternative to worry, fear, and anger? What if we saw the positive in every single moment, through divorce, addiction, cancer, and death? What if no matter what, at the end of the day, we still choose to eat cupcakes? What if we shared this idea, and inspired people to approach life with a similar mindset to the world?

What if we could help make a marriage that was ok… AMAZING, a marriage that was flat and stale… energetic and full of love? What if we could make our marriage more AMAZING by helping others? What if we created an escape for couples to let go of the everyday stresses of life, and work, to focus on what makes their marriage AMAZING? What if we created and hosted the escape this year? What if we didn’t worry about if people would sign up? What if we didn’t worry about if we would make a profit? What if this could keep just one marriage from ending in divorce? Wouldn’t it be worth it? Wouldn’t it be our responsibility?

What if we put it all out there the moment we got home? Oh wait, we just did. :)

It has been a bit crazy over the past few weeks. As much as we love love love traveling, it has left us feeling quite disconnected. Don’t get us wrong; disconnecting can be a very good thing!!! However, when it leaves us scrambling to put up blog posts because of lack of Internet connection, it has us definitely appreciating the interwebs when we do have them! ;) Thanks so much for being so patient with us and understanding when we have been a little less than consistent on getting our blog posts up! ;)

Today, for our delayed AMAZING Life Manifesto post, we wanted to share a little inspiration that we have been reminding ourselves over and over the past few weeks! Document Your Journey! It is so easy, especially as photographers (which is ironic, right?), to forget to take the time to capture our own personal moments. Sometimes carrying the camera around with us is just a hassle or other times we feel bad asking people to stop for a moment and capture a moment in time for us. But those excuses are just excuses, my friends! Crazy excuses that actually rob us of our own memories that we so want to remember!!!

Over the past few weeks, we have been all over the place and our minds have been trying desperately to keep up- but reality is, we cannot remember everything! Through this experience we have gained an even greater appreciation for taking the time to capture this very moment and document our journey along the way! Our cameras have been in our hands over the past few weeks and we have definitely been capturing the sites and sounds of our travels! We have so much to share with you all… but in the meantime (as we wrap our minds around everything), we thought we would share with you a very special video that our friend Jeremy (of Jeremy Mitchell Cinema) put together to help all of us remember the incredible journey that was the What’s Next Tour! Watching this video brings out so many emotions and is the perfect way of remembering this crazy journey we were just on! We are so excited and truly grateful for this gift and special documentation of our journey! Thanks Jeremy!!! And after watching this awesome video, be sure to check out our Instagram feed and hashtag #whatsnextcrew to see more of our fun adventures!

So, after that CRAZY, AWESOME, WAY TOO CLOSE, Ravens win last night, Ryan and I decided we would celebrate today on the blog with a special Raven’s post and delay our Amazing Life Manifesto post till tomorrow…

… However, this post has quickly become something a bit different! ;) Still a celebration, but the celebration has exploded a bit! Lol.

This morning started off a little bit like Home Alone. You know, when you wake up to your husband yelling words that we choose not to post on our blog and jumping out of bed faster than I have ever seen him move! “Liz, its 7:15! Hurry we are going to miss our flight.” Feeling the sense of urgency and actually waking up feeling pretty darn good because of the extra hours of sleep, I quickly respond, “Ryan, our flight left at 7:15 a.m.” Yes, that was the start of our morning. We were supposed to be on a 7:15 a.m. flight to Punta Cana to attend the What If Conference. Even though we knew in our minds that the flight we were supposed to be on was probably the last flight getting into Punta Cana today, we still got ready faster than we ever have before and literally within 5 minutes we were out the door and in the car to the airport. Ryan was driving safely, but fast… and I was searching my phone for other options! We had a layover in Atlanta so if we could get to Atlanta and still catch our flight- that would be AMAZING. Unfortunately, there were no flights into Atlanta early enough. So instead of freaking out and yelling at each other, we offered suggestions. We were on adrenaline and determined to make it to Punta Cana for the start of the conference!!

Somehow I came across a Punta Cana flight from Delta that could work. I called and with the help of a super sweet (Ravens fan at that!) lady we were booked on a new flight to get into Punta Cana today!!! Thank you God!

But wait- it get’s better!! Ryan dropped me off at the airport while he parked so that I could finish reserving the flight and get our bag checked. (The flight was scheduled to leave in less than 1 hour). As I am juggling my phone and two bags while looking for a pen to write down our confirmation number, I dropped my passport. I knew I dropped something, so I bent down and picked up what I thought I had dropped. I made my way to the check-in desk and all of a sudden, I could not find my passport! Somehow, in a matter of about 5 minutes and 20 feet, I lost my passport. I thought I was losing it. I thought it was one of those moments when I couldn’t find my belt but my belt was on! Lol. I asked the attendant if it was hanging off of me somewhere… and she didn’t see it either. She suggested that I ask the information desk to see if anyone turned it in. The nice gentleman at the desk said no one had turned anything in to him… but I could check the lost and found office that opened at 9:00 a.m. (9:00 AM… are you kidding me?! ;) My flight would have been half way to Atlanta by then!). By this point, we were coming close to the time where we wouldn’t be able to check any bags because it was getting to be too close to flight time. As soon as I started to panic, Ryan walked through the doors. I told him what was going on and he kind of smirked at me like I was crazy, but he knew it would work out. I gave him the bag so that he could check it and get our tickets. Meanwhile, a super sweet lady was sitting on the bench nearby watching this all go down. (Everything- from the very moment I walked in and had way too many things going on! Lol). She, so sweetly, said, “Ma’am, did you drop your passport? I saw a gentleman pick one up right here and he walked that way.” Ohh my goodness… at least I didn’t think I was losing my mind anymore. I knew someone in the airport had my passport- I just had to find them. (Keep in mind, this is around 7:30 a.m. and there weren’t many people in the airport at this time!) So I made my way back down to my new friend at the information desk. I was about to ask him to get on the intercom system and report a missing passport (In my head it would have been like a missing child report where everyone would stop what they were doing and someone would find that they had picked mine up by accident). Before I could even open my mouth to ask, he pointed to an older gentleman walking about 30 feet away from me with a passport in his hand. I took off running… seriously… lol. And I caught up to the gentleman. I said, is that a missing Passport… and with a huge smile on his face he said YES! He said he had picked it up and didn’t know what to do with it- so he was taking it back to where he found it! AHHHH! Once again, Thank You God!

Wow… so basically, this morning was CRAZY. But we are so thankful to say that we are now on a flight and will soon be joining our new friends in Punta Cana for what we are sure to be a week full of learning and growth! We are already well on our way… with many AMAZING life lessons that we will take away from this trip. #1 Always set two alarms… lol. No, but seriously, Never Panic and know that God will take care of you. #2 Be observant and never be afraid to speak up. #3 Be grateful for those incredible people that you unexpectedly meet along your journey through life who have a special way of turning your rough days into AMAZING ones! #4 And finally, no matter how bad something may seem, never ever give up!

With grateful hearts… we hope your day is pretty AMAZING! And for all of you Ravens fans… WAHOOOO! We are wearing our Raven’s pride extra proudly today!! Here is a glimpse of the scene in our neighborhood last night! Baltimore is happy!! ;)