I heart faces ~ Anything but a face!

The tittle to this post is so much fun to write! I was so excited when I heard this week's theme. I knew which picture I wanted to use right away. I took this last Easter, when my sister did her nails all pretty (well actually, they are alway pretty, she likes to keep them that way :) I love the fact that there is dirt all over her toes. It truly shows our family barely every wears shoes!

Head on over to I Heart Faces and check out the other amazing photos for anything but a face!

~Rebekah

I heart Faces-Cell phone!

When I heard the theme of this week's I heart faces, I was so very excited! I am one of those Verizon people who have been waiting forever for the iphone, and I finally got mine last week! I have been discovering new, amazing apps all week long from all of I heart faces posts! My favorite, by far, is Instagram! I was a little disappointed at how blurry this photo turned out, but I still love it! It reminds me of all the wonderful friends God has blessed me with, and the great times we share!

This photo was taken with the Iphone 4 and edited with Instagram.

Head over to I heart faces and check out more amazing cell phone photos!

~Rebekah

I heart faces~Red

This is one of my absolute favorite pictures. I love the red wagon, the hint of red in her shirt, and the expression on her face as her brothers love on her. :)

Head over to I heart faces and check out some more amazing Red photos!

~Rebekah

I heart faces ~ innocent wonder

I am in love with the theme for this week's I heart faces. It is so simple, and it can be interpreted so many different ways. When I heard this week's theme, I knew which photo I wanted to enter right away. I took this last spring while doing a families portraits at the Cherry Blossom Festival downtown in DC. It was a cold windy day, and this beautiful little girl was such a trooper! I love how her hair is flying in the wind, and her sweet little nose is all red from the cold!

Head over to I heart faces and check out the other awesome innocent wonder photos!

~ Rebekah

I heart faces ~ Winter Wonderland

Since we have not had almost any snow here this year, I thought I would be a little different.

This is one of my beautiful friends, and a photo shoot I did for her birthday party! We had a blast.

When I was looking through my photos, I passed this one and thought it would be perfect! If you can not tell at first glance, she is laying on a sheet of frozen leaves! It was very cold out, and almost everything had frozen. We still had a blast! 

Head over to I heart faces and check out the other awesome winter wonderland photos!

~Rebekah

I hear faces ~ Smile

This is my beautiful friend. She is amazing. And she also happens to be a fabulous model. This was at a photo shoot I do for one of my friend's birthday parties. And at this moment,  it just happened to start snowing in the middle of the shoot. It made for some really adorable photos!

Head on over to I heart faces and check out other amazing smile photos!

~Rebekah

I heart Faces - favorite 2010 face photo

This was one of the hardest decisions I have ever had to make regarding I heart faces. I finally narrowed it down to three pictures, but really couldn't get any farther. So I just picked the easiest photo to get to.
These are two of my favorite babies in the whole world. I have been babysitting them since they were 3 months old, and they are now 19 months. It's SO hard to believe. *My* babies are growing up. Anyways, on to the picture. I love it. I love Lydia in the front, I love John in the back. This is how it is in real life. Lydia is the leader of the two, the adventurous one. John is perfectly happy to stay behind and watch. He's the little cuddle bug. And Lydia's blue eyes. I am love them sooo much. They make happy any day of the week.

So here is to 2010, I learned a lot, and I pray I will learn a lot more in 2011!

Head over to I heart faces and check out the other amazing photos from 2010!

~Rebekah

A few Christmas thoughts

I just finished up an amazing Christmas day with some beautiful friends. Lots of laughter and games, and food. lots of food. God has blessed us so much to be able to spend this special day in such a wonderful way. 


This week for bible study I have been reading through the Christmas story for bible study, and God really lead me to look deeper into Joseph. These are a few thoughts out of my jornal. Literally. Copy and pasted out of it. And not proof read at all. So please forgive whatever mistakes you find. :)

Joseph. 

He was a man who was a wonderful example of unconditional love. When he was faced with customs, and people’s opinions he instead considered Mary, and how she would be effected by his actions. He put his self aside, and gave to Mary, even when she was the one considered to have sinned, and wronged against him. 

How many times in our own life do we do this? Never in mine. When someone wrongs me, I am normally too busy dosing myself in self pity and anger to remember their feelings. And when I occasionally do, what is my response? Well they wronged me so they deserve this... or I guess I could extend a finger to help, but if any hurt is coming my way, I am going to pull it back and let them fall. 

But Joseph took up and followed God’s calling. And the Son of God was born because of this. And He was born into a loving family. This shows, that when we follow not only God’s commandments to love above all else, but when we follow His calling into the unknown, we not only provide ourselves with the most wonderful possibilities for the future, but we also grace one another’s lives with Joy, Love and Peace, all of these which only come from God.

Luke 2:1-7

Just going to finish up the Joseph thoughts. After all of this, after Joseph made the decision and commitment to stay with Mary, their story continues. Believe it or not, God brings more hardship his way.

Mary and Joseph find out that they have to travel to Bethlehem for the census. He did not have a car he could just throw Mary in, and drive off into the sunset. He did not even have a horse. All he had was one humble donkey, and a whole lot of love for his betrothed, and the baby in her, the one that caused so many problems in the first place. But Joseph did not get depressed. He did not throw his hands up and tell God life was just too hard. He took up Mary, the baby inside of her and the donkey, and headed off on a journey. He was faced with difficulty yet again when they came to Bethlehem. We have all heard this a million times. There was no room for them in the in. It sung every year by hundreds of children’s choirs, and it had been told a thousand times by christmas plays. But can we truly understand what Joseph was feeling? He had Mary, who was in labor, and probably not in the best not in the best of moods, and there was no room for them. Now we don’t truly know how things went down, but you can guess that a lot of innkeepers were not about to let it be known that a unmarried pregnant couple had stayed in their inn. So Joseph, is confronted yet again with a chocie. A choice to love, to love unconditional, or to put up a condition, and say, Mary, I have come this far. I have pulled you over hill and valley feed you, and accepted you when no one else would. I gave up my friends, my family, my reputation for you. This is just too much. I can’t do it. Your on your own. 

But as we all know very well, that is not what he did. He searched, and when he was turned away from the inns, he kept looking. He found a stable, with dirt and animals and a manger. What kind of person was he? All he could provide for Mary was a lonely stable. She was about to give birth for heaven’s sake! But he did his best. He went the absolute furthest he could go.  And all for the sake of love. For God. 

How many of us would do this? Though we will never be faced with the same circumstances as he was, we are faced with different callings from God every day. Callings to be a good wife, calling to be a mother. Callings to work hard for our family, callings to love a friend when they wronged us. Calling to do our best in school. To do our best in chores, or work. How do we respond to this callings? Do we face this with the thought of unconditional love? Do we say, there is absolutely no condition under heaven that will make me desert this calling that God has given me? Or do we put up limits, conditions for God, and the people around us. 

I will only love my children if they respect me in return. I will only love my wife if she has dinner prepared every night. I will only love my friends if they stay out of trouble. I will only do my school work if it comes easily to me. 

How many of us say things like that? Or how many of us preserve through difficulty, after difficulty, and then finally come to what we thing is the end. And say, “ God, you have pushed my limits one to many times. You have worked me too hard. I am done, I just can’t do this.”

None of that is what God has called us too. He will push our limits. He will give us difficult times. He will most likely make us thing once or twice that our world is about to come crashing down around us. But He has unconditional love for us, even as we continually fail, and He continually picks us up again. He asks us to have unconditional love for Him. To trust Him, and to do our best, in every sort of task He puts before us. We may have to trust, take a leap of faith sometimes. Joseph certainly did that after being confronted about Mary. But we we step out, push our limits, and our conditions, and tell God and the people around us, that there is no condition under heaven or earth that can make us stop loving, that, that is when we truly discover what love, what unconditional love, is.

May you have a very Merry Christmas!!

Rebekah

I heart Faces - self portrait.

Considering my last post was all about me--- this week's I heart faces theme seems very fitting!


Let me just tell you, I have a *small* obsession with eyes. I LOVE eyes. When ever I am doing someone's portraits, my favorite photos are always the close up's on the eyes. Unfortunately I have not found many people with my same love for eyes, so I do not have many pictures of my own eyes. This day in particular, I was just in the mood to experiment, and I thought I would try taking a picture of my own eyes. :)

Check out the other lovely self portraits at I heart faces!

~Rebekah

In introduction to the real me.

ha ha, it has been a looong time since I posted. It's called trips and business, and well, basically life.
 But not more excuses, this blog is for myself, and I don't have time to beat around the bush!

While I was recently on my trip in GA for Teenpact, God convicted me of being myself. Sometimes (a lot of the time) I am a very big push over, and I don't think about myself, or even what God wants, I always think what would they think, or what would they do in this situation. So while over the last few weeks I have been trying to be myself, I realized that I am not always myself even online. Sometimes I try to copy other people's blog or FB posts. Sometimes I try to post according to what I think others will want to read. But this is not right. I need to post what I think God wants me to post. So this is it. This is the REAL me. Not fakes, no trying to imprese. If you don't like what you read, well then you need to take that up with God :)

I am Rebekah Jean Kimminau.
I am 16 (almost 17) years old.
I love my God with all my heart and have given my life to Him. With every choice I make I want to glorify Him. I want to serve Him in every possible way. I want to love Him with all my mind, soul, body, strength and heart. I want to follow His will in every possible way. I want to let other's see His love through my actions.
I fail at all of the above, many, many times an hour. But He still loves me. He still forgives me. He still wants me. And that is His amazing, unchanging love for me, that will be there for me till the day I die. Even when I fell like it's not.
I have a God-given passion for children. I just LOVE them. No matter the age. I want hold them, play with them, cuddle with them, love on them. I want to teach them, see them grow, help them love God too. I want them to enjoy life. I can not even begin to describe my feelings for children.
I love my family. My crazy wacky scary family. I will love them till the day I die. We have fun times, hard times, new times, and many other times. But we are a family through it all.
I love my friends. God has blessed me with more then I could have ever asked for, and a few that I call family. They all have special places in my heart.
I have moved 7 times, all from a state to a different state.
I have a very fun, crazy and at times silly extended family that I love soooo much.
I have my own photography business LeslieJoy Photography, and I love it. It keeps my busy, but it's another God-given passion, and I have a lot of fun with it.
I am loud, sometimes too loud. I could definitely exhibit more self-control in the area of my voice. Sometimes I screech so loud (normally when being teased by my family) that I make everyone close their ears.
I am horrible at spelling, and punctuation, and grammer, and foreign languages. So if I ever have any of that on here or any other place I write, that is why.
I love organization, I am a neat freak. I like to keep things in their places and everything pleasing to the eye.
I love to interior decorate. I love to arrange things.
I am a visual learner, and I have a photographic memory. Both of those contribute to my amazing sense of direction I have had my whole life.
I love all things girly, tea parties, dresses, skirts, pink, purple, dolls, pretend, old things, fashion, flowers, anything proper and pretty.
I have been out of the country 2 times, once to Ecuador for a family vacation, once to China for a trip with my two grandma's.
I hate bordem, and love to busy.
I love crowds. Even when you have people on all sides and it's hard to move. I just love it.
I am a total people person. I love to be around friends. I don't necessarily like the attention on myself, but I do like to know what is going on all the time with everyone.
I perform well under stress. In an emergency I love to take control and figure things out.
I am NOT a deep thinker, though I do think a lot (if that makes sense. :)
I love all things romance. Romance movies, chick-flicks and romantic novels.
I do not like almost any fantasy. I.e. StarWars, lord of the rings, Eragon, fantasy movies.
I love photos. I love taking them arranging them, printing them. I think they truly are art.
I have a very big but realistic imagination. I love to imagine things that might or could or maybe happen. My future, redo things in my past, etc. Part of this is my visual side. I also love to imagine redecoration. I can take a picture of a room in my head and rearrange and redecorate the entire thing in my memory.
My favorite chapter in the bible is Psalm 139.
I am writing a book, Moriah. More to come later on this.
I used to be obsessed with Vera Bradely. I now own about 15 pieces of it.
I am very opinionated about many thing, mainly Honda Odysseys, and baby gear.
I LOVE to people watch. I sit places and try to figure out as much about random people as I can.
I love to plan. Anything, events, trips shows. Whatever. I plan my whole life. Sometimes this back fires when God wants me to just trust Him.
I currently have no idea what I am going to do when I graduate, and I am just trusting God will show me in His own time. If you ask me what I am planning to do, that is the answer you will get.
My favorite movie I saw recently is Life as we know it.
My fav actress is Katharine Heigl, then come Julia Roberts, and Anne Hathaway, then Selena Gomez.
I have had MANY people tell me I am just like Jane from 27 dresses, and after watching that movie many times, I agree completely. She could be my twin in more then one way.
I could rant to you forever about abortion. So if you mention it, be prepared.
I love to talk. I am definitely a talker. Anyone could tel you that.
I also listen. I love to listen if I am in the right mood.
My favorite artists are Jonny Diaz, Laura Story, and J.J Heller. My favorite song though currently is One Pure and Holy Passion.
My love language is touch. So if I touch you too much, I apologize right now. I am a very touchy person. If I am ever in a bad mood and you want to cheer me, just give me a big bear hug. 99% of the time that will work very well.
I am a very emotional person. I have cried during too many movies to count. I cry for joy more then I cry for sadness.
The youngest baby I have ever held is one hour old.
I have always dreamed of someone throwing me a surprise party.
I want to sky dive when one of my best friends turns 18.
I am terrified of heights ^ha ha^
I am a big dreamer. I dream a lot.
I love being home schooled. I have always told my mother I would run away to an amish community if she tried to put me in school. I was not kidding.
I think I am one of the few modern americans that could survive being amish. Most people say I have no idea and that I couldn't. I want to go be amish for a week and prove them wrong.
I think have written plenty tonight and need to go to bed.

So there you go. That is the real me. None of that was written for or because of someone else. You get what you see. :)

Rebekah