Anyway, we woke to a rainy morning today so before we venture out to find breakfast I thought I'd post a few shots of our home for the week. We're staying in the sweetest little house in Colonia San Antonio and the first thing we did when we got there was flop on the beds....

the front patio:

the lower upstairs balcony:

and steps to the upper upstairs balcony.

view from one side of our balcony:

and from the other side!

while i was shooting on the balcony, maari accidentally locked me out of the house. And then had trouble letting me back in.....I think it was planned.

And our little backyard.

We grabbed some shots around town yesterday afternoon, so I'll post those when I have more time. Adios!

In the meantime, here are a few quick shots from Amber's day after (or month-and-a-half after!) shoot yesterday. I am LOVING the shots we got and I can't wait to show you all more! Amber completely rocked this shoot.....

Hopefully we'll have web access down in Mexico -- if we do, I'll do my best to blog while we're down there!

A few weeks ago he came over to hang with me for a couple of hours. Here's the scene: Liam and I are sitting at the kitchen table. He's eating some watermelon. I'm shelling some peas. Liam looks interested in the peas, so I put a few in front of him and he starts munching away quite happily. I look down for one hair of a milli-teeny-tiny-second at the pea pod I'm shelling, and when I look back up, he's got his finger fully up his shnoz. He looks at me, blinks calmy and says, "NOOOoooose."

Oh yes. That tiny little pea was jammed right up there. And not just inside his nose, but way, WAAAYYYY up. You're never gonna see that pea again up. After a few moments of panic from me, lots of giggles from Liam, and a ridiculous amount of fake-nose-blowing from me, I finally managed to get him to blow it back out. Crisis averted.

Anyway, in addition to being quite entertaining, his shenanigans make for some great photos. Here are some of my favorites from the last shoot we did -- on a 95 degree afternoon this April. We started out on the little playground at the school nearby.....

Uncle Jed came out to help and got roped into going down the slide a few times, too!

Here's the infamous "point". Liam's not a baby anymore, but he still has those great little chubby baby hands....

This was the exact moment where Liam learned what "static cling" means.

Then we headed over to grandma & pop-pop's house for a ride on his favorite thing in the world.....the tractor. Here we are, looking for the tractor.

....And getting angry when his mom decided to feed him a banana before the ride. Nothing stands in the way of Liam and his tractor.

Pop-pop came out and surprised Liam in the middle of his tractor ride. Liam is CRAZY about Pop-pop.

The beginning of the story goes something like this.... Earlier this spring Jed mentioned that he was thinking about getting a mohawk this summer. My response? "Excellent! I think that'll look great. Let's do it." So we made a plan....sometime during the summer, we'd get out the clippers and I would create the masterpiece. That was the plan. And it was a good plan.

But the plan went oh so wrong.

Or I missed a crucial piece of it.

Because the other night, Jed got the razor out.

I was downstairs, completely oblivious. Just watching tv and innocently eating an ice cream cone, when I felt the tiniest twinge of instinct kick in. Something was wrong. I ran upstairs, followed the light...and when I got there, my jaw dropped.

There was Jed. With the razor on the lowest possible setting -- the setting you put it on to TRIM SIDEBURNS -- not cut hair. The ridiculously low setting. The bald setting. And he had shaved off one whole side of his hair. And because he had apparently been shaving with one hand, and unable to really see what he was doing while he worked, not only was it extremely short, but there were clumps -- huge jagged clumps and spaces where it seemed he had pushed down a little too hard on the clippers, and the hair was just missing altogether....

"BUT.... WE HAD A PLAN!!!!" I yelled out, ice cream cone still in hand.

A little late for that.

There was nothing to do but take over the job and try to make the best out of what he had already started. Of course, he would have had a mohawk either way, but I like to imagine it wouldn't have been quite so....frightening if I had had my way with the clippers from the start. But with Jed, that's how things go. He keeps life exciting and unexpected, even when you think it's just an ordinary hair day.

So back to the end....Jed is now sporting a big, sweet, gelled up mohawk, and may be until the end of summer when he goes back to work at the high school where he teaches.

And it's pretty hilarious.

Except that now when I get up in the morning, I have to do my hair....and Jed's. I never would have imagined he'd be so happy to plop himself down on a stool in the bathroom and endure the pulling and yanking and blow-drying and the application of product upon product upon product that I have to go through to get his hair to stand up like it does....but he is.

So for those of you who haven't had the pleasure of seeing him yet....here he is -- my very cute punked out husband and his new prized possession: the 'hawk. :)

Carmi & Mike (you may remember them from their sneak preview) were so sweet and so much fun to shoot. They were married at the gorgeous St. Stephen's Parish in Kearny, New Jersey, and their reception took place at The Palace at Somerset Park. Their excellent band Vali brought some crazy sound and I risked getting jabbed in the face by a rogue elbow to get a few of the crazy dance shots, but the party was so wild, it was 100% worth it.

I thought I'd change it up and do a slideshow this time. To start the show, just click the play button below and give it a few seconds to load. (Be sure to turn your volume down if you don't want to hear the music!)

(Also, big thanks to my buddy Jan Thiessen who came out to second shoot with me for the day!)

It was a little choppy out on the water so I didn't break out the wakeboard for my first ride like I wanted to, but we did get a few shots of me and Jed ripping up the water.

He got the nice tree-lined background for his shot:

And thanks to Jed's "artistic photo skillz" (as he calls them), I got the blank rocky cove for a backdrop....sigh. I think his skillz may need a little more refinement, but we're getting closer!

So...who's up for the next ride??

It started last week, and so far it has been 100% bliss. Of course, I'm still processing images, designing albums, blogging, etc., but for the rest of July I'm on break from my wedding travels and that means I actually have time to go on my own adventures. We've already hit the wineries, the movies, and some great restaurants. This Saturday I drove out to Arts Fest at Penn State to meet up with some friends. My buddy Eric Himan was playing the Allen Street center stage, so I brought my camera (I know, I know...technically I'm on a photo break....but you know, the thing is just kind of superglued to my hand.) and grabbed some shots of him in front of the crowd.

It was brutally hot out, but he still played for over an hour straight....such a trooper.

State College is a crazy place. You really never know who you're going to run into. While I was shooting Eric, I made friends with some random guy who asked me to take his picture. He was so excited when I actually took it. By the way....I never say no to a photo op. If you run into me on the street somewhere and I have my camera with me, go ahead and ask me for a photo. I dare ya.

Then, a little further up the street we ran into this guy. He looked like a little stiff in his suit, so my friend Jess offered him some lemonade and kisses.

Today we're hitting the lake for a little wakeboarding and waterskiing, but don't worry....I'll be back at my MacBook tonight!

Even if you haven't been to Aruba you've probably heard about the sunshiney beachy part of the island...

But drive inland a bit and it's an entirely different story.... A mixture of cactus, dirt, a never-ending wind, and last but not least....a pack of wild donkeys?? See for yourself.

I LOVE this shot. Everytime I look at it, I think it looks like a funny little couple....

We stopped in at the hotel spa to catch up with Wendy while she got ready....

When I saw this circle pattern on the furniture, I just couldn't resist....

This was the view from Wendy & Chris's suite. Scrumptious.

We treated Savannah & Haven to their own private little portrait shoot....

And then I grabbed the "real" jewelry shot:

Meanwhile, the guys were chilling out with a Corona or two across the way....

Because the ceremony was at sunset, Wendy and Chris decided to meet beforehand to do a few shots together. I love when couples get together early because it allows them some time to relax a bit with each other and it give us a bit more time to get some extra amazing shots:

I love love LOVE this shot. I stole the idea from the man in the black socks who I spotted on the beach a few days earlier...I think the execution was the best part. It went a little something like this:

Me: Ooh! Why don't you guys go stand under that tiki hut over there?
Wendy & Chris: Okay....
Me: That's great! I'm just going to back up a little here...
Chris: Um...Can you even see me?
Me: Uh....no.
Chris: Oh. Should I move?
Me: Uh....no. I kind of like it with your head cut off. I actually did that on purpose.

At the start of the path to the ceremony, we found crazy coconut man. Ooooh was he excited when he saw my camera! He had the largest knife/spear I've ever seen and was tossing coconuts up in the air and slicing them as they came down, and yelling in about 3 different languages the whole time. Then he'd pop a straw down into the coconut and hand you your drink. It was a little scary and fabulous all at the same time. I highly recommend the coconut man.

On to the ceremony.....

Huge thanks to my sister Elisa who came out to second shoot and rocked out photo shoots all over Aruba with me! I'll post some shots from our adventures around the island next....