A Little Florida Fun

I had a blast in Florida with all of my photo shoots, but I did have a little extra fun with my awesome family.  :)  Here are a few pictures from my Florida weekend.

My Autumn got to play on the beach during my beach shoot with the Koshlap family.  She loves the water so much...if I didn't know any better, I'd say she was a fish.

We also went to Gatorland. Autumn loved it, and has talked quite a bit about being an "alligator trainer" after seeing the gator wrestlin' show.

I'm not a huge fan of birds, but aren't these colors gorgeous??

Asheville - New Year's Eve 2010

My hubs and I made a trip to Asheville, NC for New Year's Eve this year.  My uncle Kip lives there, and I got to meet his better half, Vickie, for the first time.  (He picked a good one!)  Asheville is only three and a half hours away from Augusta - I always thought it was more, so I hesitated to go so many times.  Thankfully, the drive was an easy one, and Asheville has SO MUCH to offer!  Especially beer.  And awesome architecture in the downtown area.

Somewhat unfortunately, the weather wasn't fabulous the entire time we were there.  The bright side of it is that we didn't get to do everything we wanted to do in this particular trip, so we're pretty much aching to go back already.  Or, at least I am.  I doubt my husband would argue, considering we dropped a pretty hefty amount on beer while we were there - plenty of brews local to Asheville that we've never been able to find in our area.

I also feel like it is necessary to mention the food in Asheville.  It's freakin' awesome, basically.  We had some good Mexican food for lunch at Papa's and Beer, and the best pad thai I've ever had in my life at Kanpai-Sushi.  We also stopped in at Lab for a beer.  They still had some of their own Oktoberfest brew on tap, so that's what I had.  Todd and Kip had Lab's chocolate stout.  Both were pretty tasty.  On New Year's Day, Todd and I went to lunch at Jack of the Wood where I had a really great lamb burger with parsnip fries. 

Without further ado, here are a few photos from our trip - I only had the chance to take a few because the weather and timing was not the best...  Guess that means I have to go back!

I love this!  The Promised Land in South Carolina?!  It made me laugh a little, so we turned around to get a picture.

 

The Bahamas - Christmas 2010

We are back from our cruise to the Bahamas!  Our trip had a few hiccups - namely a crappy Nassau excursion representative and some poor weather...but all in all, I think we had a great time, and it was a unique way to spend our Christmas.  At the very least, we missed the snow that happened in our neck of the woods!

We set sail on the evening of Christmas Eve - we knew it would be a little chilly aboard the ship, but I think the little bit of optimist in me grossly underestimated exactly how cold it was going to be.  If I'd had a scarf and my gloves with me, I would have been wearing them!

My awesome husband took this photo of me - I think we'd set sail at this point.

Most of my photos consisted of sunrises and sunsets.  I couldn't help myself.  The sky was so pretty, and how often do you really get the opportunity to sit on a huge ship in the middle of the Atlantic or the Caribbean and snap sunrise and sunset photos?!

Christmas Eve sunset.

Merry Christmas morning sunrise!

Welcome to Nassau!

According to the locals, there is a dog problem - if I remember what he said correctly, he said, "We have dogs on sale...buy one, get four free."  These pups were hanging out at Fort Fincastle.

This is one of their policemen, or firefighters.  I don't know which, because I learned that Bahamian firefighters are also policemen.  A two-fer of sorts.  I really wanted to ask this guy if I could snap some shots of him, but I decided against it.  The old adage in my work place is, "It's easier to ask for forgiveness than ask permission."  I also learned that most policemen in the Bahamas do not carry guns, unless they are on special assignment or duty.  This dude definitely had a gun.  Probably watching all of us crazy tourists get ripped off at the straw market.

This guy was my favorite local, and I didn't even talk to him.  He was hanging out at a food stand near one of the markets hacking those coconuts to bits, charging four bucks a pop to tourists so that they could drink the coconut water with a straw, straight from the coconut.  I just love that he's sitting there whacking away at these things with a machete, with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.  Also, his shirt says, "If you see da police, warn-a-brother."  A nice play on the Warner Brothers logo, yeah?

This is the Queen's Staircase - one step for every year of Queen Victoria's rule.  The entire rock area surrounding the staircase, and the staircase itself, was carved out by slave labor.

My hubs took that cute shot of our feet with our point-n-shoot camera.  I love it.

And our fabulous local tour guide, his name was Unochea or something like that, took this for us.

Todd and I got back on the ship after our little tour of Nassau - we made it onto the deck just in time to see the sun sink past the horizon.  Lovely Christmas sunset over Nassau.

Have you noticed a lack of photos from the second day of our cruise?  Me too!  The reason for that is awful weather conditions.  It actually looked very promising at first.  The weather didn't look bad as we were making our way to CocoCay, Royal Caribbean's private island in The Bahamas.  It suddenly took a turn for the worse as we got closer.  The seas were far too rough to get the tender boats running.  The crew turned our private island day into a day at sea.  Bummer.  I did look on the bright side, though - if I wasn't on a private island and the weather was bad, it meant that I wasn't getting sunburned!  It also gave me a chance to look through the photos I'd already taken.

I think it was a pretty cool way to spend Christmas.  :)