This week I have a cold, Zachary is getting over one, and I have a lot of work to do that I don’t feel like doing (would much rather rest). Posting this photo of a sunset I captured in Islamorada on our last visit down to the Florida Keys before having dinner at one of my favorite spots, Morada Bay Cafe. I wish I was there right now!

Canon 5D | 50mm f/1.4  @ 1/4000| ISO 160

Last week we took a mini vacay to the Florida Keys with Adrian’s family, who were visiting from out of town. We visited Key West, Marathon, and Islamorada. Islamorada is my favorite – we stayed at the fabulous Cheeca Lodge and ate at Morada Bay Cafe, one of my favorite restaurants!

I mostly shot with my iPhone and got some great images that I wanted to share. I captured and processed all of these images using Instagram on my iPhone 4s.

Boy have we been busy! Zachary’s birthday was two weeks ago, so we celebrated with a trip to Disney World!

We got tickets to Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party (we’re Jewish, but we still enjoy seasonal activities just as much as everyone else!!) and it was absolutely worth it. What a beautiful fireworks display, fun parade, and best of all was the ability to ride on the rides without any long lines! Zachary’s first ever Disney Ride was It’s A Small World, followed by Peter Pan, and then Buzz Lightyear. He had an amazing trip to Disney and is already asking if we can go back again soon.

Here’s one of my favorite images that I snapped with my new iPhone 4s — Cinderella’s Castle lit up by the beautiful fireworks at the Christmas Party!

I wanted to share a few more of my favorite photos from our summer vacation. I had such a great time taking photos on our two-week road trip through Washington DC, Vermont, New Hampshire, Philadelphia, and Raleigh, especially with my iPhone and the Camera+ app, which I used to edit all of my photos.

Udvar-Hazy Center in Washington DC

Washington Monument

Sunset on the Vermont/NY border

Zachary picking raspberries in Vermont

Beautiful mountains of VT and NH

Vermont park and lake

Zachary happy and playing in the park

Washington Crossing (driving from NJ into PA)

Second Bank of the United States, Philadelphia

Patterson’s Mill Country Store in Raleigh, NC

These images were all taken at Patterson’s Mill Country Store in Chapel Hill, NC – one of the stops on our summer road trip this past July/August.

And this is an image of the farm adjacent to the country store. It was like being transported into another time!

Another image from my Vermont photos. Looking up through the trees at Smuggler’s Notch State Park – such a beautiful place!

Canon 5D | ISO 200 | 50mm f/1.4 @ 1/2000 sec ~ edited with Lightroom & Paint the Moon actions

I haven’t posted a really substantial post here in a while, but as I was making dinner last night I realized that Zachary is turning three in just over two very short months, and I have not made time to write an update about all the amazing things going on in our lives! He is such a fabulous little boy learning so much every day and doing the most fun things, and I’ve always made a point to use my blog as sort of a baby book to make sure I record my favorite happenings and special moments. I’ve been so busy lately editing weddings and portraits and putting together print orders and albums for my clients, that I haven’t taken too much time for myself.

As you’ve probably gathered from some of my recent photo posts, we recently came back from an amazing summer trip to Vermont! We went out of town for two weeks. The trip was planned because I booked a wedding in Burlington, VT, so we planned our entire vacation around the wedding photography schedule.

We drove through 12 states (FL, GA, SC, NC, VA, MD, DE, PA, NJ, NY, NH, VT), visited 5 capitol cities (Washington DC, Montpelier VT, Richmond VA, Raleigh NC, and Philadelphia PA – which was the first capitol of the United States!). We also made a point to stop in Bartlett, NH in honor of our favorite TV show, The West Wing. :) In every place we stopped, we saw all kinds of interesting historic and patriotic sites, and we were able to see several friends and some family members during our trip! Our total mileage driven was 4,070!

Mountains of New Hampshire (taken on the iPhone)

We had such a fun time on our trip, and the first time we’ve really taken Zachary away on a family vacation that didn’t involve going to visit other family members. :) He got to experience so many different things and learned so much about the world. I really hope that some of his memories from the trip stay with him – and I’ll be sure to print up a photo book from our trip some time soon so that he can look back and recall the fun times that we had. While I haven’t finished processing all of the photos (I’ve only made two posts – one here and one here), I do have a ton of iPhone images that I captured on the trip, and I’ve uploaded those to my Flickr account, so feel free to browse those. I think I took more interesting photos with my iPhone on this trip than I did with my SLR!

Zachary's first time at a creek - Smuggler's Notch State Park, VT

When we got back from our trip, Zachary was pretty excited to start Preschool again. He really loves school and settled in wonderfully! He is such a big boy now and runs right into his classroom to join his friends. I love that he is now old enough to tell me stories about his day and the things his friends are doing in class. He tells me what his favorite things are (he loves to draw & paint, play with blocks, read books, and go on the playground), who he spends time with at school, and loves showing off the things that he’s learned. This week I learned that Zachary can now recite the ABC’s (we’ve been working on that a while but he’s never done it all in one go until this week) and he also knows the days of the week! He has also become extremely caring, very helpful (he LOVES helping to cook and prepare food and help with the dog related chores) and notices the feelings of others around him. He often asks “Are you okay?” when he notices that I’ve hurt myself or that I’m upset. He is such a sweet little boy.

In the last couple months he has become even more curious and adventurous than ever. I think our trip to the Northeast definitely inspired more curiosity in him – he is always asking what something is, why we are doing things, and wants to know all about everything.

He can’t get enough of certain books, loves reading anything about trucks and diggers, and his favorite bedtime story at the moment is Peter Rabbit. He still loves Thomas trains, Hotwheels, the piano, music, and the iPhone/iPad. He has taken to sleeping with his two dachshund stuffed animals, which we’ve named Maya (after our dog) and Penny (after my parents’ dog), and he loves his big boy bedroom which we made up for him a few months ago – complete with a twin bed!

Here’s a fun conversation we had today:

Zachary: Let’s get the mail, Mommy.
me: ok, but I have to hold your hand in case a car drives by. (I took his hand and he tried to wriggle away)
me: No, Zachary, you have to hold Mommy’s hand!
Zachary: Mommy. Be nice to me! I’m a big boy!
me: ok, but you still have to hold my hand!

How cute is that? :) Zachary’s vocabulary has simply exploded over the summer! It boggles my mind that I am now having conversations with my big boy. Well – he thinks he’s a big boy. I know he can stay a little boy for a while longer…. :)

Oh, and one more. In order to have time to write this post, I invited Zachary to sit on the couch in my office and play with my iPhone (he LOVES Angry Birds as I’ve already mentioned, as well as Talking Tom Cat). He took my phone and sat down, saying “OH-kay, Mommy. I’ll play with your phone. I’ll play Angry Birds. AL-right.” I laughed out loud hearing the inflection in his voice since I’m sure I’ve used the same tone of voice with my own mother! Sometimes he talks like he is 3 going on 13! :)

What fun things are your children doing?

Still SUPER BUSY with work, so I haven’t had time to process all of our vacation photos, but I wanted to share a few more this week from our Vermont trip – which was amazing! For all of the photo nerds out there, I processed these with the fabulous Paint the Moon Photography Actions, who sponsored Photo Fun Month last year. :) They rock!!

It’s so sad that Vermont has experienced so much flooding due to the recent hurricane! We had such a fun time on our vacation this past summer. Here’s an image of Zachary the day that we went berry picking at Sam Mazza Farms.

Canon 5D | 50mm @ f/1.4 | 1/8000 sec | ISO 200

Wow, I have been a bad, bad blogger! About three weeks ago, my computer died, and then we left for a family vacation road trip, and I didn’t really have the time or ability to blog while I was gone. Since my computer wasn’t working, I didn’t get to schedule anything to auto-post while I was away. My new, amazing iMac has finally arrived, and I have about a zillion photos to edit from my trip.

It’s rare that I have a family photo to post of all 3 of us, so for this Wordless(ish) Wednesday, I wanted to share an iPhone shot I took the day that Adrian, Zachary, and I all had a picnic at Smuggler’s Notch State Park up in Vermont (yes, we drove from Florida up to Vermont…. lots to blog about and photos to share)!