People, selling a house is crazy. Yes, somehow folks do it all the time. They manage to go to school, go to work, fix meals, play with their kids and somehow, at some time, someone makes an offer on their home. All the time this happens. But seriously, it involves a bit of insanity to make it work.

First you go through all the updates and repairs and de-cluttering necessary to allow strangers to look at your house without being utterly grossed out. The goal is to make it appealing to them, so you do a large amount of work to seek out the imperfections you’ve lived with for far too long and find a way to make them livable. The gash in the wood door that you’ve been ignoring, the streak of crayons your child left on the wall five years ago, the broken screen, the water leak, and so on and so forth.

And then, if you care at all about the actual look and feel of your home, you walk through with fresh eyes and try to make your spaces appealing to the masses. Take down that ugly bulletin board, put up a fresh photo, place a matching towel by the sink, clear the jars and canisters from your countertops and add a bowl of fresh fruit here, a vase of fresh flowers there.

Awesome. We’re almost ready to show the house. But remember that canister of Pringles your family ate on family movie night? Once you pop you can’t stop? Well, it left a plethora of teensy chips on the carpet. Get out the vacuum. Notice those circles of grime on the living room coffee table, yes, your daughter’s milk spilled and sat there for a few days. Find a rag and some Lysol. Then there’s the toilet in the basement that no one’s examined closely in a week and the Legos on the pink carpet upstairs and the piles of clothing in your own room because the seasons changed overnight and you’re still at a loss for where all your summer clothing has gone to. Yes, go pick up all that stuff and then see what else needs to be done.

At some point, you stop wiping and tidying and rearranging and you call it good. You take a few deep breaths.

You look around your house, the clock turns to Open House hour and you think, “Now why am I moving? My house ROCKS.”

As much as I’ve adored Canon over the years, I’m turning Nikon. It’s not hard to love Nikon when I’m shooting with a fabulous new-to-me Nikon D2x. The sharpness and clarity of the images pleases me to no end. It makes shooting springy pics like hostas rising from the soil and mulch that much more enjoyable.

See that guy working in the yard? Yeah, he’s mine. Te amo, Jeremy Tredway!

Our mild winter weather proved beneficial to this natural light photographer. The week after Christmas found me doing two shoots with families I really love. First up was the Kirk and Schlegel clan in Milford. Driving out to Milford under a clear Nebraska sky and photographing these families was such a treat for me!

Today was a fabulous Saturday of sunshine and fresh air and good old-fashioned family togetherness. It felt like everything was crying out with thankfulness that God created them—the brilliant and teeny yellow daffodils, the redbud and plum trees that are beginning to bloom, the grass that’s turning bright green, and of course, us, the humans who get to luxuriate in such grandeur.

When temperatures start warming up again, children flock to playgrounds. Against backdrops of still-naked tree limbs and grass that looks crunchy and yellow, they play hard while the sun shines. And then, as the sun begins its descent, mamas might put them on the swings for a few moments before calling it a day. Heads sag to the side in tiredness, faces a bit drawn. And then playtime’s over and the moms pack up their crews and move on towards home, thoughts of dinner fixings in their minds. Someday soon the sun and its delicious warmth will last long past suppertime. We wait in eager anticipation.