We started planning this photo shoot right around little J’s third birthday back in April. We knew we wanted do an outdoor shoot and thought spring would be perfect. But Mother Nature had a different plan. It was cold, windy or rainy for many of our first attempts and then we were taunted with a sunny day when Little J came down with strept throat :- (. Last weekend we FINALLY had a warm spring afternoon and we went for it. And we captured some adorable stuff. I’m in love with their matching outfits.

Here’s a sneak peek while I am editing the rest….

We met up to do some family photos of this beautiful family in their yard on a beautiful late spring morning. Little B was such a treat to photograph. She was just so sweet as she played around the yard allowing me to capture some candid shots. And with a little help from her favorite stuffed animal Brown Bear, we were able to capture some great posed family shots with her parents and grandparents.

Here’s a quick sneak peek of what we captured. I can’t wait to show you the rest.

I met the Happy family a few years ago when I shot their wedding. This time I was actually doing some baby shots of their cousin but they were in town visiting so we snagged a few of the Happy boys as well.

Here’s a sneak peek of a few candids we snagged.

Baby J turned one in March and we were just waiting for the weather to get a little bit warmer so we could do an outdoor shoot. Even up to a couple of hours before the shoot, we weren’t sure if the weather was going to hold out. But it did and we had some nice light for J’s One Year Old Shoot. It took her a few minutes to warm up to the camera but soon she was laughing at Mommy’s fun singing and even pulling off a few modeling poses on the shiny wood floors inside. Instead of crawling J does this adorable (and very ladylike) scooting across the floor earning her the appropriate nickname “Scoots” from Dad.

I think our first shoot together was a success. Here’s a quick sneak peek.

Allie and JR are both well traveled and have spent many years traveling the world while getting an education as well as traveling the world to teach others. While doing so, they met each other through a friend while both living in China. They hung out initially as friends and wound up falling in love….and the rest is history.

Their wedding was held at the gorgeous Willowdale Estate. They were married mid November but the weather would have you think it was mid September. It was mild and in the 60′s. The wedding was very elegant but at the same time very fun with a very relaxed atmosphere. I loved all of the details. The votive candles that lined the room of windows that they were married in as the sun was setting, the cake toppers made of clay by their sister, a unique and gorgeous engagement ring, the bridesmaids in different but perfectly complementing blue dresses, the personal photos spread around the mansion personalizing the estate for them, etc….I could go on and on.

They did a first look (which as a photographer I love because it allows for all the photos to be taken before the ceremony as to not have to pull the couple away from any of the festivities). I’ll blog about this in a later post. We were able to do pictures outdoors because Mother Nature was on our side.

These two were so very considerate and sweet with each other throughout the entire process. I met with Allie first during her wedding planning but then again met with them as a couple because they were in this together. On the wedding day, you could just see how in love they were with each other with each glance and laugh. And now as we are now designing their wedding album, it is nice to hear them working together as a team to come up with a final album layout they will both love. As we talked about loving each image in your album since you will have it for a long time to come, they joked about how their kids would be seeing it one day.

Congratulations Allie and JR on your beautiful wedding and starting your life together.

A few pics from the day…..

So I got home tonight and again, my personal chef had not prepared anything for dinner. And then I got my daily reminder that I don’t actually have a live in personal chef. I stood in front of the fridge for awhile debating what to do. Closed it. Logged on to order delivery from Sidewalk Cafe. I ran out of patience going through the menu and realized I probably was going to find the delivery wait a tad too long if the menu was dragging on like War and Peace (hungry = cranky). DRAAAAAAGGGGGED myself back to the fridge (caps for dramatic effect) to take another look. Turns out there was PLENTY of food in there to make dinner. I was just being extremely lazy so with Brian Williams in the background chatting my ear off, I set to it. And just fifteen minutes later a colorful and delicious dinner was ready. It even had some nutritional value.

I have an addiction to spicy food. I love it. In Prague once, my friend and I stumbled upon a noodle joint, a welcome surprise in the land of overcooked unidentifiable meat and potatoes. I chose the Chang Mai noodles (3 spicy stars ***) and devoured them. To this day, I still have not found noodles on par with this deliciousness in broth. As I was shoveling it in, my friend decided she had to try them and see what I was enjoying so much. One bite and she literally lit on fire. Okay, not literally but let’s just say, there were tears, all liquid from our table and all nearby tables was immediately empty and we quickly realized why the menu was imprinted on a tissue box in the center of the table. She was in awe that I was shoveling these in. So I walked away from this meal a bit cocky (as if there is some status in being able to endure spicy food while others suffer).

Three months later that same friend and I were in NYC for a night and went to lunch at a Thai restaurant recommended by friends. I ordered the basil noodles “as spicy as you can make them.” OY! The noodles that came were actually red from the chilis and after just a couple of bites my face became tingly and my vision started to blur. It was the kind of spicy that is completely absent of flavor and numbs the senses. My friend pushed back from the table afraid to be even close to noodles that would have such an effect on me after the “Prague incident.”

After that trip, I came home and tried to replicate the Prague noodles. I never could. Sigh. But in the process learned a lot about Asian stir fry and the Asian market. And I have that to thank for tonight’s dinner….

Recipe: Cook sliced tofu in non stick pan with cooking spray until slightly brown on both sides. Remove from pan. Add sliced red onion, red pepper, yellow pepper, sugar snap peas and broccoli (or any vegetable you have). Saute until they start to get soft. Add 2 TBSP soy sauce, 1 TBSP oyster sauce and palm sugar and chili paste to taste (I added almost 2 TBSP palm sugar and chili paste). Add tofu back to the pan. Saute for 2 minutes. Add chopped thai basil ( I love it and added an entire bunch). Mix and voila. Dinner. And lunch tomorrow. And only one frying pan, a cutting board and knife to clean. Over brown rice would have been a nice way to serve this but waiting 45 minutes for rice to cook was not in the cards tonight.

Any veggies will do although I think the onion adds a bit of sweetness to it…

The other ingredients. If you are someone that is just starting to cook with tofu, this is the best brand and type (not just extra firm but SUPER firm). I was not a tofu fan for years because of that silken stuff….Bleh!

The final product

We left St Lucia and headed to last stop on our trip-the city of Durban. It’s always sad knowing a trip is coming to an end but we headed to our last stop feeling really good about all the stuff we had seen along the trip. Ranger Bob described the trip so well. Highest Highs and Lowest Lows of any vacation to date. It was the perfect way to describe it. Highest Highs – Swaziland Sunrise and St Lucia Turtle Tour. Lowest Lows – Camping in a Cyclone and Traveling on the Lost Plane.

We arrived in Durban to the very cute Happy Hippo Hostel. It had a brightly colored common area and a roof deck bar. I think mostly we were happy to remove our stuff from the “truck” knowing we never had to get back on it. We hit up the aquarium in the city and strolled the beach a bit. We then headed up the roof deck for an authentic curry dinner. It was essentially curry in the hollowed out center of a quarter loaf of unsliced Wonder bread. But it was a nice change from the camping food. Some local dancers came to entertain us and we had a few beers as we said goodbye to the rest of the tour.

It was am amazing adventure and I’m so glad Kerry and Jaime do not research vacations because if they had we might not have wound up on this trip……and I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything. We laughed non stop for two weeks and I found two new travel buddies who are up for adventure and traveling the world….with upgrades of course.

For a link to more pictures from the trip, check out the link to the photo gallery http://elainedonohuephotography.passgallery.com/event/4KKYC107135

We were very lucky that we were in St Lucia for turtle breeding season. For just a few weeks each year, the turtles come ashore at night to lay their eggs on the beach. There are miles and miles of beach and it is rare to see one but we were determined to try. We booked a trip through a local photographer (who had quit her job in England and moved to St Lucia to run photography tours of the area…..sure i was a little jealous) who hooked us up with a company who ran these turtle tours. We were picked up at the “hotel” at 6 p.m. and headed into the park. The first hour of the trip as we drove up to the beach was a sunset safari. We saw lots of rhinos among other things. We then drove 13 miles up the beach in the sand under the stars searching for turtles. We stopped for dinner at a rock on the beach and did some star gazing finding the Southern Cross and Orions Belt. We were already having a great night but as it started to get late, we were getting a bit discouraged we were not going to see a turtle. But then we did. And she was so amazing. We were all so mesmerized with her as we followed her as she walked back to the water that we all wound up getting soaked from the waist down as we accidentally backed into the ocean waves in the dark. We left the beach on a complete high. And then were treated to even more fun night safari sightings including a pack of hippos on land looking for food (apparently it’s not too early for hippos to be out KERRY) and a rhino just 15 feet from the truck.

It was an amazing night and when we got back to our room we sat up in the common room reflecting on the night. Nothing could ruin the high we were on. Nothing except maybe a bat in our room. An African bat. IN OUR ROOM. Logically, Kerry put on my safari hat and I climbed into my mosquito net. Now what? I wasn’t about to attempt to capture an African bat. So we called a number we had for the hotel. A sleepy woman answered and informed us a bat in our room sounded like an internal problem. We weren’t exactly sure what that meant but we disagreed and told her we were going to make it an external problem by calling back every ten minutes until someone came to fix said problem. Moments later a maid showed up and captured the bat very Mr. Miagi style. It was impressive. And to make it even more impressive, she was clearly sleepwalking while doing this because when we tried to thank her the next day she appeared to have no recollection of three shrieking American girls waking her up in the middle of the night to kill a bat. Either way problem solved.

The next day as most of the group decided to hang out around the murky South African “hotel” pool, we decided we wanted to take a walk to the beach. So armed with a map we asked around about a good route for a hike. A woman pointed out a loop and said it would take about 45 minutes. So we put on our suits, grabbed a bottle of water and headed off…..45 MINUTES??? Maybe by space shuttle. Five and a half hours later, three delirious American girls melted back into the “hotel.” It was a gorgeous walk where five ecosystems came together but it was equivalent of hiking the Sahara mid summer. For a few moments I wasn’t sure we were going to complete the loop. We did, luckily, and also survived the sketchy truck of locals that circled us for the last two miles of the walk. Thankfully Kerry was armed with her pocket knife to protect us all. Which is ridiculous but oddly did provide a sense of comfort.

We finished St Lucia with another turtle tour (not as lucky the second time around) and then a boat cruise where we saw TONS of hippos. And fun fact……despite spending most of their time in the water, hippos can’t swim. They just walk and float along the bottom. However, on land those big guy can run REALLY fast and can kill you instantly. And despite what Kerry will tell you they walk on land even during the day.

All apologies for the blurry pic but it was pitch black, i was shooting with no flash and chasing a turtle down the beach. Blurry happens.

Late night bat hunting…..

Ranger Bob at your service

The beach sand contains titanium.  Makes the sand SUPER HOT!  It’s a world heritage site so no one can mine the titanium

Hiking the Sahara

If you don’t already know this about me, I was apparently “an African Queen in my last life. Who was brutally murdered at a young age. It was a devastating blow to the community”. You can’t make this stuff up. The only psychic I have ever been to told me this. I have witnesses. After she gave my other friends very normal readings “you’ll be married in Tahoe, you’ll have 3 kids, etc, etc”, this is the reading she dropped on me. And I like to believe it’s true. Well maybe not the brutal part but the African Queen part. And after this trip, I’d like to also believe that I was the Queen of the Kingdom of Swaziland.

We may have asked our Swaziland sunrise safari guide if there was a history of them losing a queen at a young age. He said there was. Of course I have to take this info with “a grain assault” (I have a friend that thought that was saying instead of “a grain of salt”) because he also told us that right now they had a “pretty good king.” And a google search upon returning home tells a much different story. But they hide it well and this pretty good king rules over one of the most beautiful places I have ever been to.

We stayed inside the Miliwane Reserve. The no longer camping Americans upgraded to stay in an adorable beehive complete with hot showers. There were no fences here so the animals wandered around the reserve with the people. We were told we really only had to worry about hippos. We got some great advice from our tour guide about what to do if we encountered a hippo. I think his exact words were “You’re dead.” Helpful..thanks. And while hippos do kill more Africans each year than any other animal, I was assured by Kerry that it was far too early for hippos to be out (bold statement based on nothing).

On the first night we stepped out of our beehive to head to the campsite with our head lamps on. It was unsettling to see nothing but reflections of eyes staring back at us. But alas we didn’t bother the animals and they didn’t bother us.

Everything in Swaziland was absolutely incredible. But the highlight for me was definitely the sunrise safari. We met our guide at 3:30 a.m. and headed out in a jeep up a mountain in the reserve. Still dark, we climbed the last leg on foot and were welcomed to the top with the most stunning views. Over the next two hours, the sky kept changing as the sun rose and the fog lifted. It is easily the top five best things I have ever done. When we climbed back down, we were then treated to a safari of zebras, impalas, warthogs, monkeys, hippos and even two crocodiles.

I realize this is kind of a ridiculous statement but if you are ever in the area, make sure Swaziland is on your itinerary. And tell them the old Queen sent you.

I won’t even start to describe what 19 people plus wet gear for 19 people shoved onto a truck smells like but trust me on this one, it is NOT GOOD. As we headed out of the park the rains and wind continued. We stopped on a bridge where the guides pointed out what used to be a trickling brook underneath was now a raging river. What we didn’t know was that we were in a cyclone and that had just started evacuating the park because of severe flooding. Probably best we got the info when we did because I have to say learning it any earlier would not have improved the situation as it was.

When we made our next stop for “munchies and crunchies”, the American girls came out with nothing but cleaning supplies. If we were going to live on that bus and sleep in that tent, the group was going to be introduced to the magic of Febreeze. We sprayed every square inch of that bus and wiped down every surface we could. I carried the Febreeze with me like a gun in a holster ready to pull it out when the situation called for it.

We crossed the border from South Africa into Mozambique later that day (not the most relaxing border crossing I have ever done). The drive through the capital of Maputo was equally stressful with the natives waving their fingers at our truck in disapproval. When we got to the campground in Mozambique the sun was shining and we were able to upgrade. Upgrade is an overstatement here but the takeaway message is we did not have to sleep in the wet tent. Pretty much everyone on the trip upgraded as well and we all set up the tents to dry out in the sun. Everything everyone owned on the trip became draped across the campground. I’m sure the owners were thrilled to have us. We then headed down to the beach where Kerry dipped into the Indian Ocean for the first time.

We headed into town to do some shopping (town also being an overstatement for the 12 vendors on a roadside). But we all picked up a few things and headed back to the site to hang out as a group. Our guides hired some locals to cook us a fish and shrimp dinner at the campfire (The orange vests they were wearing gave the impression these locals were the same we saw doing post cyclone road repairs earlier that day). But the shrimp was delicious (by camping in Africa standards) and by far this was the best meal of the trip so far.

The truck didn’t fit into the campground so it sat outside the campground and was just an empty shell. We started referring to it as the plane from Lost. During their first days stranded on the island they would run in and out of it only to get supplies and we envisioned coming back to it being infested by a pack of warthogs. If you haven’t seen Lost, just trust me on this reference.

Damage from the cyclone

View of campground from the beach