Of all the Chinese festivals celebrated throughout the year, the Lunar New Year is the most important. In ancient China, the New Year was the time when the emperor was honored by his subjects, but in today’s modern world the New Year heralds the coming spring. In fact, in China the Lunar New Year is often called the Spring Festival.

Chinese families like to welcome the New Year with a clean slate. Houses are cleaned from top to bottom to remove all traces of the old year’s misfortunes. Windows are washed until they shine. Walls and gates are brightened with a fresh coat of paint. Everyone in the family gets a new outfit. All debts are settled before the holiday because traditionally, old debts couldn’t be claimed after the first day of the New Year (now THAT’s a tradition I could learn to like!)

On New Year’s Eve, a great feast is served and each dish has a special meaning. Fried spring rolls resemble gold bricks. “Yu”, which is the Chinese word for fish, sounds like the Chinese word for “surplus”, therefore most families will serve a whole fish to symbolize abundance. There are also candied fruits, uncut noodles, and lotus seeds. These foods symbolize riches, long life, and the blessing of more children. Dumplings symbolize family reunion. Some families hide a coin in one of the dumplings. Whoever gets the dumpling with the coin inside is said to have good luck in the coming year.

On New Year’s Day, red envelopes, called “hong bao”, containing money are given to children and servants. Only even dollar amounts are given to ensure luck in the New Year. Firecrackers are set off to frighten away “evil spirits” and bring prosperity. Finally, the entire family goes to watch the annual Dragon Parade. The dragon is a very important animal in Chinese culture, and once a year it appears to bring good fortune to everyone.

So what does “Gong xi fa cai! Xin nian kuai le!!!” mean? Wishing you prosperity in the new year! Happy new year!

I know what you’re thinking, “How does a Caucasian, photographer, farm girl from the hills of Tennessee know so much about Lunar New Year?” Because I am the mother of one of China’s precious daughters. My husband and I, along with our oldest son and my parents, traveled to China in December 2004 to adopt our “Peanut”. From the moment she was placed in my husband’s arms (yes, he got to hold her FIRST!) she has been a bundle of joy. The image below is literally seconds after we met her for the first time. She smiled as if to say, “Daddy, you’re FINALLY here!”

Five years later she is as smart as a whip and full of spunk. We can’t imagine our lives without her!  So in honor of my little girl, let me be the first to say, “Welcome to the year of the Tiger!”

I’ve had my fun taking pictures. I’m ready for it to melt now!

Most of these were taken on our little detour to Clingman’s Dome…

I thought the contrast of the yellow and orange foliage against the stark white bark of the bare trees was really eye catching!

I borrowed Nancy’s “fisheye” lens for this image.  That is why the ground looks curved.  A really fun effect!!

This next series of images are my first few attempts at doing this type of landscape panoramic.  It was a lot of fun to experiment with the technique!  I hope they give you an idea of just how lovely the scenery was.  EVERYONE should see this at least once in their life!

This one little valley was absolutely VIBRANT! 

Of all the images I captured, I think this is my favorite!  This was taken in the parking lot at Clingman’s Dome (we didn’t even walk up to the actual dome!)

I’ll be home from my FINAL road trip of the year tomorrow.  After all my “jet-setting” this month, spending the last week relaxing on the beach with my family has been the perfect ending to a month of fun.  I’ve got some lovely images from the Gulf Coast to share once I get things settled back at home.  Then of course, it’s back to work for me!

(yes, the URL “Idon’tknowwhotookthispicture.com” is a joke.)

Kimberly, can I hire you to pose me and direct the lighting in my everyday life?  You know, you could just follow me around and reposition me and all the light sources so I can always look this good.  Thanks bunches ladies!  You sure know how to make a girl feel good about herself!!!

But, was it worth it?  Yes!  I saw some of the most spectacular scenery I’ve ever seen.  Unfortunately, I only took a few snap shots along the way because I knew that we would be hard pressed to hike out by dark.  I had a single purpose— to photograph Piney Falls.  This is the only waterfall in the park that is not clearly visible.  Here is a snap shot I took of it from the overlook a couple of years ago…

We went in January just to take pictures of Piney Falls hoping that we would be able to get a better view with the leaves off the trees.  We were very disappointed.  If you decide to visit Fall Creek Falls State Park, this is all you will see of Piney Falls.  I know, I know.  It’s not very impressive from this angle.  But I KNEW there had to be something spectacular hiding behind all those trees.  I just had to get there to photograph it so everyone else could see it too!

We started hiking at 7:30 a.m. on Monday.  It was still twilight down in the gorge.  After two hours of hiking, the sunlight finally rose above the gorge wall and started peeking through the trees…

One quick snap with the trusty point and shoot camera and we were on the move again.  We hiked upstream for what seemed like MILES, sometimes hiking the creek bed – other times scaling the gorge wall depending on the depth of the water.  It was VERY difficult.  But there were a few times that we came upon a place in the creek that was so peaceful and serene…

Yep, another quick snap with the trusty point and shoot camera  Do you notice the ribbon tied around the tree on the right side of this snap shot?  All the scenery looked the same and we decided to drop part of our gear behind a bigger tree up the hill just a bit.  We brought camping gear with us ::just in case:: we were not able to hike out before dark.  We saw no point in carrying it the entire way, so we dropped it on some flat ground at a point we were sure we could get back to before nightfall.  I marked this tree with a ribbon so we wouldn’t walk past our gear on the way out LOL!  Also, it was an obvious sign that we had been there just in case we needed to be found (thank goodness that wasn’t necessary!)

For five straight hours, we hiked.  Since I had to drop my pack to pull out my point and shoot camera, and I did NOT want to sleep in this gorge, I decided to not to take any more pictures of the creek as we hiked.  After all, everyone has seen a creek before, right?  We kept pushing forward for HOURS.  Even when the creek went completely dry (as in, NO water in the creek) we kept going.  How can a creek downstream from a waterfall have no water in it?  Strange…

It was a joyous moment when we finally heard Piney Falls.  But God had one last joke planned for those foolish enough to make the trek to Piney Falls— boulders.  Scaling boulders the size of houses while carrying 25 pounds of camera gear on my back is NOT fun!  :-(  We would scale a few boulders, and I just KNEW we would be able to see the falls when we got over/around them, but nooooooooo.  More boulders.  They were never ending!!!  But finally, we came upon two, house sized boulders with a human sized “rat hole” between them.  I crawled nervously through this hole which revealed one of the most beautiful sights of my life…

Piney Falls

It was STUNNING!!  All the pain of the hike was instantly worth it!  But then we noticed something odd which explained the lack of water in the creek leading up to the falls.  Evidently there must be a cave in the pool at the base of the falls because all of the water was draining out and there was a visible whirlpool on the surface.  Now I understand why the park service has not made this waterfall more accessible.  The pool, which looked very inviting after a 5 hour hike, is DANGEROUS!  There is a current that can pull down trees – literally.  If someone decided to swim in this water, it would be a very sad ending to their life.

I spent 10 minutes photographing the falls.  Here’s a snap my husband took of me while I was working…

After 10 minutes of photographing, I packed up the gear and said, “Let’s go.”  One quick group shot of everyone else with the point and shoot camera and we were off!

(a little fill flash would have helped this, but I was on a mission – I wanted to go HOME!)

Yes, after 5 hours of hiking, we spent a grand total of 10 minutes at this beautiful location.  I did NOT want to sleep down there!!!  I pushed HARD to get home.  I bypassed things I said I would photograph on the way back (I’m kind of regretting that decision now, because there was about 30-45 minutes of daylight left when we got out).  I did not stop until I reached the spot where we had dropped our gear.  We spent 30 minutes eating and resting so we could make the climb out.  We had to climb a hill that averaged 60 degrees incline (80 degrees in places).  It was a climb of about 1/4 mile.  Walking on a relatively flat surface, I can cover a whole mile in about 12-15 minutes.  It took just over an hour to climb this 1/4 mile “hill”.  Unbelievable!

I’m not sorry I made this hike.  It really was worth it to be able to share the image of this beautiful place with the rest of the world.  However, I STRONGLY discourage anyone from attempting this hike.  There is no trail.  There are obstacles that you can’t even imagine.  The water is dangerous.  And it was downright HARD!  The park rangers don’t even go to the base of Piney Falls!  (very often anyway )  Besides, there is a picture of it now.  No one else needs to go there  And I will NOT go there again!  No way!!!

The leaves are really putting on their fall color in that part of the state…

We made our way around the one way road to a place called “Buzzard’s Roost”.  The fog and mist was THICK!!!  There were times we couldn’t even see 10 feet in front of the car.  I made my way down to an overlook and took this pull back image of the fog and clouds rolling up the gorge…

But this is the image I had in my mind…

Unfortunately, by the time I got the shot set up, the mist really started rolling in and I lost some of the color of the trees in the gorge.  No worries, I’m going back to this area on Monday to hike to another waterfall (and the weather is supposed to be SUNNY!)

We’re home for a few days so I wanted to post a few snapshots from our trip.  (I’ll spare you the boring museum shots )

These are “my” girls.  Believe it or not, they are the same age!

The highlight of the Mississippi trip for my kids was the zip-line.  Unfortunately, it RAINED and was COLD all but one day while we were there.   We only got to do the zip-line once

It was really, really HIGH…

But the splash-down was AWESOME!!!

The boys LOVED it!

I’m off again in a few days to hike in and photograph two new waterfalls that were recently acquired by my favorite place on earth.  I’ll have more pictures to share soon

• 1 person

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W had different ideas.  Very different.

W and his brother T decided to play their own version of WWF Smackdown (which is COMPLETELY against the rules, I might add!!).  At some point in the rough housing, T threw a blanket at W and it scratched W’s cornea.  Ugh…  I tried to brush it off as no big deal and sent W to bed, and I thought we had escaped major injury because he went right to sleep.  Not so.  He woke us up at 12:30 a.m. SCREAMING in pain.  There was nothing left to do but go to the ER.  So off I went in the middle of the night with 4 kids, a bag of books and snacks to the ER by myself. (Nothing like this can ever happen when their daddy isn’t working.  That would go completely against the rules of the universe!)

Thankfully, all that was required was an eye patch, some antibiotic drops, and a big ol’ dose of Tylenol with Codeine  :)

Anyone that knows W will tell you that he is pretty dramatic.  He was really bemoaning the eye patch–that is, until I drew a big scary eyeball on it. Then he decided having an eye patch was really cool!  Boys…. ::eye roll::

Here’s one quick snap of  W’s “eyeball”.  Don’t get scared now…

(and no laughing at my artistic skills either!  There’s only so much I can do with a sharpie!  LOL!!)

I mean, look at this… A face only a mother could love, right?

WRONG!!!  I’m the mother and I DON’T love it!!

Of course the condition was exacerbated this year because their mommy/photographer felt the need for them to dress up (::choke, gasp, sputter…:: CHURCH clothes on a weekday?) and pose together (…TOGETHER, are you serious?) in ONE photograph (LOL! you must be joking, right?).

Attempt number one…

Uhhh, guys…we want the relatives to say, “Awwwww!” when they open our card, not scare them out of ten years of life, ok?  What a bunch of goof-balls!  ::sigh::

Oh, my sweet little Peanut… ::sigh:: Can I get a side of cheeze with that?  (yes, this is cheeze with a “Z”) ::eye roll::

Let’s try something not so “looking at the camera”…

Eh, it’s cute and I like it, but I want everyone to be able to see your beautiful faces.

Ok, time for the most torturous thing a mommy/photographer can ask her children to do.  A TRADITIONAL pose…  ::faint::

Don’t even ASK how many head swaps I had to do to get that image to look like that!  Peanut is still giving the super cheeze ::double eye roll::

Ok, time to break out the big guns….”If you will all stand together and hold hands, and look at the camera, AND smile while I take this picture, I will make a batch of cow patty cookies when we’re finished.”

(Yeah, I bribed them.  What else could I do?)

SUCCESS!!!!  Don’t I have the cutest little brats you’ve ever seen?

Milk and cookies all around