Camera Shopping and My Inheritance

I'm still dying with work.  One more week of summer classes left....I think I can, I think I can, I think I can...

On to cameras....I love taking pictures.  I won't say I'm very good at it, but I enjoy capturing memorable moments, scenery and landscapes, wildlife, flowers, etc.  I used to shoot with a film SLR and a telephoto lens, but really stopped doing that 5 (or more) years ago when digital photography became so much more prevalent and when I got tired of having to pay so much to develop a roll of film.

I got a cheap point and shoot digital camera that I still carry with me at all times, so I'm able to capture those random moments that come up, but I've never been overly satisfied with the quality.  At least, the point and shoot hasn't compared to the quality I would get with my film SLR, but I never wanted to jump into the digital SLR range until the quality was really good.  I remember seeing grainy/pixely pictures and just not wanting to pay for that.  The bad part of digital photography for me is I now have years worth of photos archived as digital files, but hardly any of them printed!  I've never taken the time to do much scrapbooking, but I would at least put my photos in an album once I had printed the rolls.

That brings me up to today. Knowing that I have this big trip to Russia planned for next month, I knew I had to have a better camera than just my point and shoot.  Therefore, I've been researching DSLRs for awhile now and had narrowed down my search.  I was pretty set on getting the Nikon D3100.  The ratings were pretty high for this entry-level DSLR and it was in my price range.  I was just watching prices and trying to decide what lens to buy in addition to the kit lens.

Then my grandmother decides that she's going to start giving me and my brothers our inheritance now while she's still alive because she wants to see us spend it, which is a little hard for me to emotionally process.  I guess I don't want to think about her time coming to an end as she is one in my family that I'm very close to (closer than I am with my mother...that's another blog for another time).  On a sidenote- My grandfather died in November and it's been really, really hard on my grandma.  They were married 62 years and she's still living in the house that they called home their entire marriage.  Pretty amazing and such a great example of love and commitment.  She's slowly been doing some cleaning as she realizes her time on earth is coming to an end (she's 88 and plagued with health problems).

Grandma tells me that she's sending me this large check that she and grandpa had set aside for me, and my thought was....this is enough to put a dent in laproscopy or adoption fees!  I didn't tell her that, but that was what I thought.  "Are one or both of those in my future, God?"  My husband and I talked about how to spend the money as we don't really need anything and we have all our debt except our mortgage paid off.  We decided the wisest thing to do was just save the money and make sure we contribute the maximum amount to our Roth IRAs these next few years since we only opened Roths 3 years ago and probably should have more saved for retirement given our ages.  Real exciting, huh?

But I kept thinking about wanting to do something that would remind me of my grandparents and yet still honor their money saving spirit.  And then I started thinking about how they have both supported my traveling and adventuresome spirit through the years.  I was the first one in my family to travel to live in another state, the first to travel to another country, the first to live abroad, etc. and while this drove my parents crazy, every time I would call home or visit, my grandparents would ask to hear stories and see pictures.  Grandpa traveled when he fought in WWII and Grandma never got to travel much outside of the US, but her mother always told her to travel when she was young and she would always tell me the same.

All of this caused me to look at the next step up in cameras and I fell in love with the Nikon D7000. It's a newer camera than the 3100, and is considered a mid-level SLR.  The reviews on it are fabulous and it rates higher than the 3100, but it's been really hard to find due to backorders and low stock from Japan. I went to our little, local camera shop this past week and they had just gotten one in stock that morning!  I looked at it and played around with it and then went home to think about it some more.

I decided to get that camera and spend double what I had originally saved up for, but decided that the step up was in honor of my grandparents. Every time I use that camera, which hopefully will be a lot, I will think of them and it almost makes me cry thinking about it now as I type.  I still miss my grandpa and worry grandma is not too far behind him.  I miss the missed opportunities with never being able to share our children with them.  Will I ever get to share our child with her?  I've lost that chance with grandpa and it still makes me sad. He would have been an excellent great-grandpa.

I had to order the camera body because I wanted to get a different lens then the one in stock, and it's supposed to arrive on Monday.  I might just tear up when I go to pick up the camera. I'm so excited though about the opportunity I have to remember both my grandpa and grandma. And the rest of the inheritance money?  It's going in savings for now and then our Roths...unless God decides to show us otherwise!