You know that kind of day where nothing goes right? I’ve been having a lot of those lately. One of those particular days went a little something like this:

Baby is up all night long

Mama tries to make breakfast and ruins everything

Mama tried to do laundry and spills liquid laundry detergent everywhere

Papa calls the 100th window supplier on the island and finds that even they are out of stock for what we need to finish our never ending lanai enclosure

Mama and Papa decide they need a break and head to the beach for some surf

Show up at the beach and find blown out conditions with windsurfers everywhere

Mama and Papa decide to salvage the day and spend quality time on the beach with baby

and then this happens….

Right now, I am…

Cheering on my 7 month old crawler!

Counting down the days until our trip to California. Weddings, family, late summer evenings and In ‘N Out Burger…oh my!

Reliving hilarious moments from our 80′s Beach Party weekend

I just stumbled across this crazy book Where Children Sleep by James Mollison and thought I would share it with you all (I’m in a book sharing mood it seems).

James Mollison is a world renowned photographer born in Kenya, raised in England and has traveled the world photographing “big” concepts. Some of his work highlighting the disparity between consumers and producers of luxury products, daring to challenge the idea that humans evolved from apes by photographing different species “passport style”, putting a face to the issue of hunger around the world and now telling the story of children in all kinds of different circumstances by photographing their bedrooms.

Here is an excerpt from jamesmollison.com describing his latest work:

Where Children Sleep- stories of diverse children around the world, told through portraits and pictures of their bedrooms. When Fabrica asked me to come up with an idea for engaging with children’s rights, I found myself thinking about my bedroom: how significant it was during my childhood, and how it reflected what I had and who I was. It occurred to me that a way to address some of the complex situations and social issues affecting children would be to look at the bedrooms of children in all kinds of different circumstances. From the start, I didn’t want it just to be about ‘needy children’ in the developing world, but rather something more inclusive, about children from all types of situations. It seemed to make sense to photograph the children themselves, too, but separately from their bedrooms, using a neutral background. My thinking was that the bedroom pictures would be inscribed with the children’s material and cultural circumstances ‘ the details that inevitably mark people apart from each other ‘ while the children themselves would appear in the set of portraits as individuals, as equals ‘ just as children. This selection of diptych’s from 56 in the book (Chris Boot November 2010). The book is written and presented for an audience of 9-13 year olds ‘ intended to interest and engage children in the details of the lives of other children around the world, and the social issues affecting them, while also being a serious photographic essay for an adult audience.

-Chris Boot

Follow the link here to see some of the stunning photography from this book or order it for yourself on Amazon.com (It’s currently out of stock that’s how amazing it is)

This Moment- A Friday ritual. A single photo- no words- capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor, and remember. If you’re inspired to do the same, leave a link to your ‘moment’ in the comments for all to find and see.

I’ve talked about my love for the blog www.soulemama.com and now Amanda and her husband have just released their third book! I can’t wait to check out:

” Following the course of a year through the passing of the seasons, this book explores the ways we can create deep family connections and meaningful memories through living in tune with the cycles of nature. From stomping around in mud boots in the spring to gathering around the woodstove in winter, our activities naturally change from season to season — from the rhythms of the seasons comes the rhythms in our homes, our hearts, our families, and our every day. Paying attention to these changes slows us down, inspires new types of creative play and exploration, instills a sense of family togetherness, and deepens an awareness of nature and self that can make our lives, days, family, and earth grow stronger.

The Rhythm of Family explores what we learn and can gain as parents and families by encouraging and experiencing creativity and nature exploration with our children, the seasons can provide us with a rhythm that brings us close to the earth, and closer to our children.”

The thing that I miss most since we moved to Hawaii is the seasons and I’m hoping that this book will provide some seasonal inspiration that we can adopt to our Hawaiian lifestyle. As Harper grows older (by the second it seems) it is so important to me to create lasting memories, family traditions and meaningful everyday moments and I know this book is just the sort of “guide” that I can wrap my heart around.

Tired of hearing about our awesome vacation yet? Well I’m not quite done sharing so just humor me a bit longer while i tell you about how stoked I was to end our trip to the Caribbean with a stop off in California to visit my mom, dad, brother and his family. There is nothing like home and even though our stop off was a quick one we packed a whole lot into it. In two short days we were able to share Harper with my entire extended family (we’re talking like 50 people!), we squeezed in some updated family portraits and even had time to relax in the backyard and enjoy the warm summer evenings.

If hubby were in this picture it would be the perfect snapshot of my boys

My first baby

Grandpa Love (check out Harper’s angel wings, how perfect is that?)

Remember when I told you that my family was cooler than yours? Well here is the proof:

Every time we go sailing we divide up the nights between each couple and plan some sort of activity or evening entertainment. There are typically costumes, music, lots of drinks and even more stares from neighboring boats wondering just what the heck is going on. (Yes, you really did just see a grown man covered in face paint and chanting something about a Barracuda.)

Things kicked off this year with an intense night of games inspired by the t.v. show Minute to Win it. We were given team masks and competed in a series of seemingly simple tasks that ended up being ridiculously difficult. For instance, ever tried to stack a bunch of dice using only your teeth? How about sucking up an M&M through a straw, transporting it a few feet (still maintaining suction through that straw) and balancing it on a spatula that your partner is holding between their teeth? Not difficult enough? Try knocking a bunch of ping pong balls out of a bowl using the air from a deflating balloon. Random. Fun and incredibly challenging. Somehow I didn’t take a single photo of the actual games but our team masks were pretty sweet.

Slethasauraus

The Pony-up Bitches

The Scallywagging Reef Sharks

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Round Three-Flop or Dive

Since the competition was so tight we decided the final round would be a sudden death. Without consulting your partner you had to decide whether you were going to belly flop (two points) or dive (one point) off the back of the boat. Unfortunately I didn’t get any photos of this action but lets just say we were all a little sore.

In the end there could only be one team of champions crowned….

Here if my competitor partner Seth soaking in our victory…that’s right Sethasaurus came out as victors!!!

And all that body paint…yeah we found out the hard way that it wasn’t as “washable” as advertised.

For the final night of fun we all dressed up as pirates and performed pirate dances for one another. As usual the costumes were epic (we seriously take more costume luggage than actual luggage) and the dancing was pretty authentic to how I would image a pirate would get down…pirates dance to Kanye West right?

Like I said, this family is like no other and I am so blessed to have married into such a wonderful, fun loving and awesome crew. Thanks everyone for such an incredible trip

Hubby, Harper and I had such a fun weekend that we decided to extend our fun through Monday. We kicked things off at grandma and grandpa’s who graciously took over morning baby duty so we could squeeze in some much needed zzzz’s. We swam, floated and ate popsicles in the jacuzzi. We paddled our hearts out against crazy winds and ended up catching some fun little rides on the outrigger canoes. We practiced the art of staycationing at the Waikiki Marriott Hotel lounging poolside with friends and cooling off with an occasional dip in the over chlorinated pool. We BBQ’d, we napped, we went on bike rides and assembled new toys. We rested, we enjoyed, we slowed things down (in that pack as much fun in as you can kind of way).

Every once in a while you have to just toss the schedule and follow the fun and that’s exactly what we did over the past few days. Now it’s back to reality and I’ve got to be honest….reality isn’t so bad either.

This Moment- A Friday ritual. A single photo- no words- capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor, and remember. If you’re inspired to do the same, leave a link to your ‘moment’ in the comments for all to find and see.