Sunday, March 29, 2009

Hail!!!!

We had quite the hail storm here on Friday.
We had some pretty good sized hail. Jen's holding this one. They got bigger than this too!
This was one of the bigger ones we found. It wasn't quite as big as a ping pong ball, but it was close. Susannah's car got caught in it. She chose the wrong time to make a Wal-Mart run. She got a couple of dents.

I shot this video in the back yard. It was pretty loud. I'm glad we didn't have more damage!

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Disney World

Besides having the time share, the other reason we decided to visit Orlando was to go to Disneyworld.
I had been to Disneyland a few times growing up, but neither Susannah nor myself had ever been to Disneyworld (or Florida, for that matter). By the way, I didn't take this picture - just my disclaimer.
I don't know how Adam talks me into doing dumb things, but he does. He was actually pretty nice on this one. This was our first day. We visited Hollywood Studios that day. We loved "Tower of Terror!" It was awesome!
The next day we visited the "Magic Kingdom" park. Strangely, it was my least favorite of the 4 parks we visited. It was also super busy.
This picture cracks me up, because you can't see Adam's legs. It's just weird.

Being with such a fun group inspired craziness. We were always trying new things, daring people to do stuff, and getting "points" for random things. On this day, we were getting points for random spinning jumps and other crazy things. I don't know how this came up, but Susannah was offered a hefty set of points if she would do this tiptoe move to the next ride. This makes me laugh so hard!!!!!!That evening we checked out Downtown Disney.
Just about every evening, we headed back to the hotel and played games. It was so fun.
Adam finally tried out his new set of Heelies. He couldn't quite get his balance at first so Julie and I had to help him out.
I think Epcot was my second favorite park. This first time we visited, we did all the rides. At this park, however, we had the longest wait of our trip. It was to get on a ride called "Soaring." The pictures below show how we kept ourselves entertained.
Julie introduced us to a game called "Shaky Face."
You are supposed to completely relax your face muscles. Someone gets a camera and gets it on and focused on you. When they're ready, they say go . . .
and you start shaking your head like crazy. They then snap your picture. It was so funny. You can't do it very much or for very long or you'll get a major headache. My pictures were so hideous, I thought I'd spare you the nightmares.
They also had these interactive games where you are sort of projected on this screen on the wall and you have to hit these bubbles. It was pretty funny.Another cool experience was going to Cirque du Soleil. It was really cool. We went on Wednesday night.
We explored a bit at Downtown Disney again and found some really cool Lego stuff.
Julie didn't come to Cirque with us. When we got home, we saw what we thought was her in bed. I headed into the other room and she was hiding behind the door. She jumped out and scared the crap out of me! I screamed . . . loud.
My favorite park was Animal Kingdom. We're on a cool Safari ride here.
I was completely in love with the tree they had in the middle of the park. I think it was called the Tree of Life. Hmmmm.
Anyway, they had made it and it was so huge. The trunk and most of the branches had animals carved into them. It was so cool.
Susannah won the biggest competition of all of them. We had a bet to see who would see someone they knew first. Susannah spotted a student from last year who is now in the first grade right next door to me. It was fun to see him and he still keeps talking to me about it at school. He's cute. He's the only one any of us saw that we knew! That was a little shocking to me!
We had to swing back by Hollywood Studios for another ride on Tower of Terror. It was there that we experienced our "Disney Miracle." We were going to have to wait at least 85 minutes in line because there were no more fast passes. We were prepared to do it and were walking up to the end of the line, when a family walked up to us and asked if we wanted their fast passes because they were too chicken to go on it. We were very thankful and our 85 minute wait turned into a 5-10 minute wait!
We finished off the Disney adventure back at Epcot where we toured all the country pavillions. That was really cool. I like this picture of Adam thoroughly enjoying his chocolate eclair from a bakery in the French village. Fun trip! We made it back home Saturday night, tired, but happy!

P.S. Check out Susannah's blog to see some of the engagement shots we took!

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Florida

Over spring break, we took a really fun trip to Florida. Seana's mom has a time share in Orlando, and she was kind enough to let us put it to good use.
We decided to brave the trip in the car which took us a bout 14 hours. Who knew Seana had a wild streak in her! It was a fun trip.
We even got to pass through Biloxi, Mississippi! Any of you who are John Grisham fans can imagine my excitement. I had to take this picture in honor of one of my favorite authors.
Also on the trip, was Julie Martin who is extremely hilarious. I'm not sure how she did the turban look, but we thought it would make a great picture.
We got there late Saturday night. After attending church on Sunday, we headed across the street to take some pictures at the beautiful Orlando temple. Julie and I practiced some engagement poses in preparation for the photo shoots with Adam and Susannah.
I snapped this shot of the bride to be in front of the temple.
It was a very pretty temple and reminded me quite a bit of the Houston temple. It's a lot bigger, though.
Yahoo for temples and good friends!
Later that day, we went to visit a co-worker of Susannah's and mine who just recently moved to Florida. Sonia now lives just less than an hour from Orlando. She and her family were so sweet to have us over. Apparently, I'm the only one who took the "silly picture" suggestion seriously.
After a delicious bar-b-que, the Gonzalez family took us to Coco Beach to look around. There were a ton of people there.
I was shocked at how cold the water was. Not the best picture of me . . . I'll blame it on the cold water and the wind.
We almost stepped on this little guy as we walked along the beach. Yikes! We saw a few others as well.
I love this shot that Susannah got of Julie.
There was a cool pier that we walked to down the beach.
Gabriel loved the seagulls and kept trying to catch them. It was very entertaining. He kept us entertained with his blonde jokes and even some great Chuck Norris jokes.
After the beach we made some s'mores on the grill and then had some serious excitement . . .
We were there just in time to watch a space shuttle launch from Cape Canaveral! It was AWESOME! We just stood in Sonia's front yard. Kennedy Space Center is only about 10 miles from her house. This is when it first took off.

I took video of the whole thing while Susannah took still shots. We didn't hear anything shuttle related at all in the first 2 videos.We have about a million shots of it in the sky, but I'll let this one suffice for now.

Here's video number two. We were pretty excited.


If you listen in this video, you should be able to hear the sound of the take-off. It was quite loud in real life.

Once the shuttle left our view, the sunset caught some of the lingering smoke and it looked so cool.

We thought it was sort of dragonish!

After it was over, we came in and rewound the DVR and watched it close-up. I'm so glad we were able to see it. Julie kept calling it "epic." After we left the Gonzalez house, we sat in traffic for a couple of hours and finally picked Adam Warr up from the airport. I'll post about the rest of the trip in the next post.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Mohawks

The other day I was the photographer for a little hair-cutting party.
Nate gave all his boys mohawks. They LOVED them.
I like this height order shot. It took a lot of work to get them in that position and then to keep them there long enough for the picture.
Here are all 5 of them. Thank goodness he didn't cut the girls' hair!
These two little guys were cracking me up the whole time. They are all so funny!

Vinyl

Back at Christmastime, I ordered some vinyl lettering from my friend, Amanda.
I don't know what my problem was, but it's taken until the last couple of weeks for us to put it up! Susannah took the job of actually putting it up while I directed the placement. Susannah's a pro.
She's very meticulous!
Cute! I love it. I've been looking for a good thing to put for my kitchen and I liked this one the best. Here's a side note for Kristal. Unbeknownst to me, this is the same font you used on that cute B hanging thing you gave us that one Christmas! It fits perfectly! :)