Beachery

Having lived my entire life in completely landlocked states, there are couple of things about visiting the ocean that always surprise me:

1) The water really is salty
2) The waves don't care if you are small
3) Creatures you can't see like to hang around you
4) Sand gets everywhere and stays there almost forever

I don't mean to paint a negative picture; the beach was amazing. It was beautiful, relaxing, fun-filled, romantic, and full of jellyfish.

We probably had 30 jellyfish incidents. I got just a teeny sting on my ankle (right after stepping on something in the water that gashed my foot). But there were lots of other people who got some major stings from sea nettles.

You don't want to mess with one of those.

OK, now seriously onto the positive stuff.

We all arrived on Saturday to get settled, then went to church Sunday morning. A few of the adults took the kids on a walk down to the beach with strict instructions to do no more than wade in the water to keep the Sabbath day holy.

I'm going to give you three guesses as to how that went.

I love seeing the progression of how much wetter and wetter Dane's clothes get. And this wasn't the only time he went down to the beach fully clothed, only to come back completely soaked. Laurie Jayne told me that seeing Dane roll around in the surf was one of the purest expressions of joy she's seen. I wish I'd been there to see it.

This trip was June's first time to ever experience the ocean, and I think she lived it up. Every day, she excitedly asked to go to the "bubbo."

She loved playing with her cousin baby Ben. They are exactly one year and 4 days apart, but you can only tell their age difference by the length of their legs and the number of their teeth. I'm pretty sure Ben outweighs June by more than a couple of pounds. 

They played happily together. 

She did occasionally take advantage the wisdom of her age. 

Sweet Mariah really doted on June.

Dane loved playing with his cousins:

And enjoying the waves:

We were also able to get some lovely portraits:

 Hilton Head is a lovely place, and not just because of the water. Stay tuned for more reasons we loved our vacation!

Profusion of Posts

At least, that's what I hope.

I want to be a better blogger, and I want to find the time to do it. And luckily, I have all sorts of posts to catch up with, so I have plenty of material! I'm months behind in posts, so things won't be in chronological order, but there are things I want to make sure get posted. Firstly,

Frost Family Reunion 2013!

Today I'll share the tale of my sad career as a family photographer in Hilton Head, SC, a story otherwise known as The Universe Doesn't Want Me to be a Photographer.

The first photo shoot was for the whole family, and it was the most important, since we all get together so infrequently. It had been raining, but it stopped for a short time, and we were able to snap some pretty good photos--no small feat with a group of 43. 

Silly shot!

 

Then, after probably only ten minutes, right when we started doing some individual family shots, the rain started up again:

Emmaline, Jennifer, Leslie, Gibber, Alena, Jared, Noelle, Mariah
(A prize to any non-family who can guess the ages of all their kids!)

I thought the Cobia rain photo was lovely, but it's not exactly wall art. 

Makenna, Addie, Monique, Allen, Carter, Emery
Amazingly, the foliage was thick enough that Allen & Monique's family got a decent photo.
A couple of mornings later, Tess asked me to take some picture of my lovely niece Arin in her baptism dress. The combination of our wonderfully air-conditioned condo and the hot, humid morning made my lenses completely fog up. I mean completely. And it's not like I could just wipe them off, because the interior lenses were cloudy, too.
By some sort of miracle, my telephoto lens was clear for about 3.5 minutes, which allowed me to get a couple of good shots.

Later, Meghan asked me to take some family photos of her family. I should have learned from the beach shots to leave my camera in the car to stay warm or something, but leaving your nice camera in a hot car just seems like a bad idea for several reason. Anyway, my lenses were hopelessly cloudy again, but luckily Meghan's camera had been in the car and has a lovely 50mm lens that allowed for some nice photos.



Molly, Ben, Meghan, Claire, Stephen, Lauren.

In the end, I was able to get one or two good photos at each shoot, despite my problems with the weather. I think I like being a pretend photographer (as opposed to a real photographer) because I can take some nice photos without the pressure of people really expecting them to be good.

Which reminds me of the first interaction I ever had with my sister-in-law, Laurie Jayne. She said something about how she was looking forward to eating some Japanese food I was planning on making; I responded how I was nervous that it might not be that good. She said, "Then I will spread word of your mediocrity, so then we'll all be pleasantly surprised."

Clever, no? And exactly the way I'd like my photography to be known.

Frost Family Reunion 2009, Part III

In the last post, I failed to mention the major sunburns we all got. Joel and my sunburns were just from our own laziness. I don't have any pictures of my burn, but Joel was foolish enough to let me take some pictures of him while he played pool with his brothers:


Dane's sunburn was due to a mom who was not thorough enough. Dane is allergic to some sunscreens, so I don't have the nice spray on or stick types. Just regular old lotion. So I'm supposed to make sure I get good coverage, and I apparently did not. These pictures don't show it super well, but he had an uneven burn down the side of his face and a triangle under his eye:


Those two pictures are all we have of the day after beach day, since it hitherto became known as Vomit Day for many of us. Dane threw up in the morning, but I tried to convince myself it was a fluke, despite the fact that several other people were already throwing up all over the place. I just wanted him to be able to ride the train at Griffith park. But then he threw up several more times in the car on the way there. So we dropped off Jake and came right back home. Boo.
Luckily, it was just a 12-24 hour bug for most of us, and by that evening, Dane was in good spirits again. Tess had a kids' activity of making individual pinatas, and Dane was really itching to participate. He had been sick when they made them, but by bashing time, he was ready to roll, so I made a monkey pinata for him really quick.

He was reluctant to let me help at first:




Even though he was one of the youngest to try his hand at the pinatas, I thought he held his own quite well, if I do say so myself.
The next day was Hollywood Day!!
We started out at Grauman's Chinese Theater, trying to find our favorite celebrities' hand and footprints:
Joel chose Abbott & Costello

While I went with Leonard Nimoy, true to the nerd I am.

Then, things got really exciting when I found the Harry Potter square, complete with wand prints!

And Joel found the footprints of his celebrity crush:

The only really notable star we found down the walk of fame was Michael Jacksons. It was a happening place, as you can imagine:

Then, we searched the streets for a superhero to get our picture with. Joel was particularly excited about this because he recently watched a documentary called Confessions of a Superhero that followed the lives of these people who dress up and pose for tips around Hollywood. So he ultimately chose The Incredible Hulk to get our picture with:

This guy, Joseph McQueen, talked with Joel a little bit about being in the documentary and what happened to the Superman guy. Apparently a new, younger guy forced out the older guy who was in the movie. So we refused to take a picture with Superman.

That was our most exciting celebrity sighting.
That is, until we ran into President Obama outside Madame Trussaud's Wax Museum!

He and Joel really hit it off.
Dane got really excited about a monkey climbing a vine in Ripley's Believe it or Not:

And then, even though we don't ever really watch Sesame Street, Dane recognized Big Bird and was excited to meet him:

Word to the wise: If you're ever in Hollywood, avoid this Elmo! He weasled his way into our picture and then demanded that we pay him, even though we didn't even ask him to be in our picture! And since when is Elmo a Lakers fan? It was all very untoward.
Anyway, we loved Hollywood, but one afternoon was definitely enough for us.
Back home, Joel and Dane decided to take a little swim in the backyard pool:




Tune in next time for family pictures and the wrap up of Frost Family Reunion 2009!