Old Edwards Inn (is the best place on earth)

We went on a little 3 day vacation to Old Edwards Inn and Spa last week for a nice, easy start to 2012 and it was wait for it

amazing.

The best vacation I've had since my honeymoon 4 years ago. Typical Day:

Room service breakfast - Mountain Hike - Lunch and Shopping - Workout - Steam room - Jacuzzi - Shower with 13 heads - Wine - Dinner - Fire and reading.

No kids, no dishes, no computers...

I fully recommend it.

This place had a dedicated Dove Ice Cream bar station. Complimentary ice cream bars 24/7.....

Anyways, I was too busy relaxing to take any photos. I genuinely feel terrible about it. Here's one quick one Sarah took with her iPhone of me doing my morning yoga on top of a mountain. And yes, that's a joke. I hate yoga.

Best wishes to everyone who read this (and everyone else I guess) for 2012!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Thank you so much to everyone who has visited my blog this year, hired me to shoot your wedding, said something nice about my little business to a friend, or helped me in any way. I have had an amazing year and am very grateful for every blessing in my life. Thanks also to my good friend Sean (who just survived an appendectomy this week) and who photographed my wife and me and our gorgeous kiddos. I am not posting all the photos yet or a link to the photographer's website because he's asked me to wait until the web gurus are finished with it. (He's updating it so keep your pants on. I'll post his site soon...)

VACATION

I want to know what other people do with their free time. Is it really great having a schedule and a 9-5 type of job with vacation time? I think that would be incredible. You go to work, you work, you come home and watch football. Or whatever you do. Set vacation time where you aren't worried about 10 million emails piling up and you're not thinking to yourself that maybe you shouldn't have turned work down just so you can sit around. I am very grateful for my ability to create my own schedule but it comes at a cost. Working for yourself means that you're never free. Sarah asked me why I always take on a new project the moment I get caught up and the only answer I could come up with is that I have to. I will never be satisfied that I've done my job as well as I can or that I've done everything I need to do to insure that I keep people coming back next year and the year after.

I'm not crying about it, I just wish someone would put a gun to my head and make me stop sometimes. That's probably what it would take.

Saturday was my first day off in months and it was a real treat. Sarah bought some sailing lessons through Groupon with Charleston Sailing School so we got out on the water for a bit. I have a new dream. Win the lottery, buy a huge catamaran and spend a few years exploring the caribbean. Or maybe I should just raise my rates. By about 500%. I'll give it some thought. More short term, it might be pretty cool to rent one and explore the British Virgin Islands for a week or so. If any one wants to split one (and you're not a huge pain to travel with) let me know. They're about 6-8g's per week and hold 6-8 people. I've got the itch for some clear water and a place without internet. Occupy Caribbean.

photo taken with iPhone.

BENJAMIN

Benjamin is teething. And crawling. They grow up so fast... lol.

Willoughbys (Willoughbies?)

For those of you who don't know this, my name is actually Tim Willoughby. Not TIMWILL. I shortened the name for you kind folks at home that can't spell my obscure surname. You're welcome. I wanted to post a few personal photos since I almost never do and since I know that both of my blog viewers out there would love to see what we look like these days. A few of these are a few months old. A few are much more recent.

Yes, I'm currently sporting a fancy new beard. Sort of reminiscent of a young Jon Goldsmith/Dos Equis I think. CLICK HERE

Unfortunately, it's a pretty awful red hue so I've decided on black and white photos. I'm sure it'll be all white soon enough though since old age (30) is knocking on my door.

Two notes on the photos.

1. As bad as I am at blogging, I'm much worse at taking personal photos. The gear is always in the car or I've been shooting all day, or my wife is just looking so terrible I can't stand to point the camera at her (that's a joke) ;) , or yadda yadda. I'm not going to make any weak resolutions about trying to be better at it. But I promise the world I'll be better at it. Most of these were taken by Sarah with her trusty iphone. One was taken by my buddy Sean Lata. He's awesome. Check him out. Anyways, these are just snap shots. If you hire me for your family photos I promise I can deliver better than these ;)

2. I'm not a scary person. I normally smile all the time but I haven't been hitting the teeth whiting toothpaste as hard as I should so I'm reluctant to flash my chompers at the camera.

One last thing I want to say, and I know you don't believe me, but I have so much stuff to blog that will be going online soon. I just don't want to put it all up at once because I'm afraid of crashing the intraweb with all the traffic that will inevitably ensue.

Charleston has been good to me and I've had amazing wedding after amazing wedding after amazing...etc.

Check back in.

Sarah and Dominic

I'm still alive and well. Sorry I went MIA again from the blog! Things have been super hectic. On top of how busy I've been, and this is great, I have been struck down with the flu this week. Yes. Thanks universe. I didn't bother getting a flu shot this year because my superior immune system is above it. Also, Dwight says you shouldn't coddle your immune system and his advice is pretty sound usually.

I can't complain too much, especially after watching 127 Hours where the guy uses a pocket knife to cut his own arm off to survive. Not a bad movie if you don't need dialogue to be entertained. The whole time though I kept thinking of James Franco's acting lessons

PS: This shot of Sarah and Dom was taken on the iphone

Benjamin Willoughby!

Gray Benko is a good friend of ours and was kind enough to take some really awesome portraits of Benjamin a few weeks ago. Yeah, it's weird to post another photographer's work on my photography website but she's just better with babies than I am and I haven't taken any great photos of the little tyke yet! Be sure to check her out if you need a kids photographer!

Benjamin Michael Willoughby

We're probably just going to call him Ben. Or maybe not. Sarah corrects me every time I say Ben so maybe that won't happen.

Sarah, my wonderful wife, really amazed me this time with Willoughby 2.0

I didn't think I could love number dos as much as Dom but I really do. He's completely perfect. Ears, nose, eyes, short brown hair. And a huge cleft in his chin.

And as soon as they make a raw plugin for the brand new Nikon D3100 I will put up a ton of photos! In the meantime, you guys are stuck waiting. I've got one tiny black and white for you guys for now and the other photos are of Sarah a few hours before we went to the hospital and Dominic watching and stealing the spotlight.

Dom's first birthday! (actually, it was almost two months ago!)

We don't have enough photos of this kid. He's so huge and cute. BTW, we've given him at least five haircuts at this point (not that it shows...) For those of you with kids; Dom just started walking and he's hilarious. He consciously keeps his arms down like a real human! Ha. For those of you without kids: I'm sure you don't care about that story or this post....

You just wait until it's your turn.

Dom's 8 months. ish

Everytime I tell people how old Dom is I get corrected because I'm always about a month off. I can't keep up. He just started crawling this week and he's a handful. It's not really crawling because he doesn't use his legs....he just drags himself along by his arms. Anyways, picking him up is impossible because he can't stop trying to grab everything that's NOT in reach and putting him down's out of the question because he drags himself towards the computer cables. One thing that's kinda funny though for those of you who have kids (if you don't have kids you'll just think I'm lame for even writing this) is that he loves our dog but she's terrified of him. So, in our tiny house, she doesn't really have anywhere to hide so dom drags himself around the house like a crazy injured soldier following her and laughing/cackling the whole way. It's hilarious. I should have a video but I just don't. Maybe I'll get Sarah on that. So, heres a shot of him from last week. ish. He'll grow into his nose one day...

Dominic Willoughby

(Click play and then pause the video first then start reading. That way it can load up...)

Sarah and I had our first child on Monday night (Aug 10th)! Sarah is incredible. She wanted to have the birth naturally so she didn't get an epidural. She started having intense contractions around 8:30 am and labored 14 hours using the Bradley method of relaxation . At 10:30pm the obgyn insisted that the labor wasn't progressing at all and that a c-section would be necessary. Apparently Sarah has what the doctor called "little boy hips".  It gets kind of technical...

Obviously a c-section is not what Sarah wanted but it worked out for the best. The delivery at that point was quick and everything went very smoothly. At 11:27 pm a beautiful, healthy boy was born! His name is Dominic and he's 7 lbs 11 oz and 22.5 inches long. Some how I was able to snap a couple pics of everything that happened and I put it into a little slideshow. Don't worry, there isn't anything too graphic. It's just a little 5 minute video so hopefully it's done loading by now. If it isn't FULLY loaded, just keep waiting. It's kind of annoying if it starts and then stops 20 times.

Thanks for checking in, everyone, and for keeping us in your thoughts.

Feel free to leave us a comment below.