ojai time of year

It was that time of year again last week, where my family travels to Ojai for some R&R and family time. The light this time of year is gorgeous. I know I say this no matter what time of year we go, even when we travel there in the summertime, but there’s something about fall there. The colors of the leaves, the bike paths, the mountains with snow on their tops. Just breathtaking. The sweaters we bundle up in at night time. Although this year we had an unusually warm day where we even got to break out our swimsuits which I pack always ‘just in case’. Because the one year we thought there’s no way we would swim, we had to buy swimsuits. We rode our bikes, visited the Santa Barbara Zoo, convinced my kids to indulge me in a photo shoot, shot Romeo’s 10 month photos, read two books, enjoyed massages at the spa, ate delicious food, I could go on. But you get the point. I will do posts here and there with our highlights. Here’s some of the scenery that I can’t get over when we are there.

monday blues

I don’t know about all of you, but I was not looking forward to Monday this week. After a very relaxing, sleeping in, and non chore doing vacation, Monday is extra hard to face. But alas, lunches needed to be packed, children fed, and homework completed. Dishes to be washed, and laundry to be put away. Back to the grind. So if you’re having a little difficulty with your Monday as well, here’s a photo that put a smile on my face, and hopefully will do the same for you.

Stacie and Bryan’s Sibling Shoot

I had the privilege of photographing this little girl for her 3 year old photos, and this time I was asked to capture not only Stacie again, but her new brother Bryan. Such a sweet brother and sister bond between the two of them. You can see more photos on my photography blog from this session here.

sneak peek

Just a tiny peek at a session I did a couple weeks ago. Oh, the tiny toes and fingers. . . . delicious.

newborn elizabeth

I have loved photographing this family for the past few years, so when I received the call that they had welcomed a newborn baby girl, I was excited to come meet her. She was 14 days old at the shoot and just wonderful. I really have fallen in love with photographing families in their home lately. The kids are so at ease and it’s a calm, familiar environment for everyone. If you’d like to see more from this shoot, please head on over to my photography blog.

working…

sorry for the sparse posts here and there but I have been busy editing two lovely sessions that I hope to share with you very soon. I am finishing one clients disc at this very moment and hopefully this weekend I will have some time to prepare some posts. we have been super busy with school and homework and house guests and back to school night and volunteer duties and aaron worked 48 hours in 3 days last weekend. so we are in need of some down time this weekend. be back next week. for now, here’s one shot from a session, this little newborn is oh so loved. more to come!

Palomar Mountains Photo Essay

You can see photos from camping trip 2009. 2010.

wordless wednesday- some days it’s just too hot to eat our veggies, so instead we drink them

hawaii day eight

Our final day in Paradise we asked the kids what they wanted to do, and they responded with “go to a new beach”. So we obliged. We went to a popular snorkeling beach and spent half of the day swimming and boogie boarding and searching for crabs.

Every afternoon I would make smoothies for everyone, which is our tradition on any vacation, or pretty much any given summer day. The local market had amazing fruit and I bought frozen spinach and Hawaiian spirulina, kefir, juice, and so we were good to go. I have to admit I make the best taste tasting and healthiest smoothies of all time. I also found these cute little umbrellas to make them extra fancy.

No vacation is complete with a good old fashioned water fight. Unfortunately for Aaron, he still is no match for my dad. Even with the flippers on.

One final sunset.

Goodbye Paradise

Kauai Day seven

Ziplining Day. This. Was. Awesome. We knew we wanted to zipline while in Kauai, and that was one of the first things we scheduled when we got to the island. I checked out a few websites of local places, and I chose one completely on how well I liked their website. Forget the reviews and location, I went for pure design and style. And I have to say it totally worked out. We chose to do a 3.5 hour excursion. Greta and Romeo sat this one out with my parents, and the boys came with us and my sister and brother in law.

I HIGHLY HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend these guys for zip lining. In fact, if the kids were a little older, or we were staying a little longer Aaron and myself and Jessica and Carl would have signed up for the 8 hour kayak, hike, and zipline tour with them. It was unbelievable. They lease private land from a family and so it is secluded and beautiful, and you can’t see this part of the island without them because of it being private. Not to mention, if you ask for Eric, you won’t be disappointed. He was kind of hot, and we had to keep fanning my sister throughout the whole morning.

I’m trying to figure out how to put this harness on, and I just couldn’t visualize it.

That is Eric doing our safety briefing. Sawyer was the very first person to volunteer which I was not expecting in the least. So off he went first.

We did this line twice. The second time they insist you do it backwards.

Gunnar preferred to see where he was jumping.

Next up was propelling down over a waterfall. You have to feed your rope with one hand from behind you and go down backwards. It was beautiful and awesome. But before that I had to check in with my mom that everyone was still alive and well.

The last zip line we did twice. Same thing, forward once and backwards second. It was over water and just was amazing. They encouraged you to hang upside down as well, which we did.

Here’s the boys going across together.

And anxious to climb back up and do it again.

Here’s Aaron and I, I’m on the left, he’s on the right.

After zip lining we came back to the house and hit the beach for the afternoon.

Then we showered and cleaned up for dinner.

For dinner we ate at Casa Blanca which was wonderful. One of my favorite meals, beautiful setting.

They had a band playing and Sawyer made fast friends with the base player. Sawyer found out he owned a boat and arranged that he would throw his letter in a bottle out at sea. Love this kid. Here he is with the base player and his letter and bottle.

Aaron claims that this zip lining experience was probably the best documented trip of all time. Possibly. But how can I not snap away at what we got to experience!? If you can believe I have only one final day to share with all of you. On the 9th day we were busy packing and getting to the airport, so Day 8 is all that is left. I’ve loved splitting this trip up by day. It’s let me hold on to the vacation a little longer.