The Everglades is called “The River of Grass” and it’s easy to see why. It’s very serene and definitely one of the most ecologically interesting and beautiful places in the United States (and the world)! I would love to go back one day to one of the serious bird-watching and wildlife-watching areas without the kids and actually photograph some wildlife with my “real” camera. My inspiration for that kind of photography is my friend Nora, who is an absolutely incredible wildlife/animal photographer here in Miami.

Anyway, here are my favorite shots from that afternoon – all Instagrams. I should also mention that FULL credit goes to my wonderful husband, Adrian, for finding this great location for me to jump out and take pictures!

(this image of me and Zachary was taken by Adrian)

Since most of this trip was at night, I don’t have any photos until the next day. And not actually until the FL/GA border did I start taking them, since I helped a tired Adrian out by driving for part of the trip home.

I think the marshy areas near the FL/GA border are really beautiful! It’s one of my favorite parts of the drive.

We were excited to arrive at the welcome center!

The Sunshine State!

The bridges going through Jacksonville are always kind of cool looking.

There were so many contrails in the sky that day!

My husband joked it looked like Missile Command over Florida!

I’m a sucker for a sunset through the moving trees shot. This image is very Florida. :) The last photo I took before it got dark.

My husband, children, and I are Jewish and do not celebrate Christmas, but my in-laws do celebrate it, so we were there for their holiday during our visit. It is interesting to learn about one another’s holidays and share in some of the traditions.

On Day 3 of our trip and the first day of our visit to Kingsport, we got a dusting of snow at my mother-in-law & father-in-law’s house! It was amazing! While it was nowhere near the snow that we got two years ago (the year of the Snowpocalypse), it was a lot of fun and Zachary was so excited about it. I was too! I love snow. :)

Z catching snowflakes on his tongue! Adorable!

Adrian captured this shot of me photographing Zachary in the snow. Yes, we do have matching jackets. I got them a few years ago when Adrian & I went to Alaska. I think this was the last year that Zachary fit into his though — William will get to wear it next time. :)

Me & my snow bunny!

A few of the sunrise on Day 4 of our trip. My IL’s house gets the most spectacular views of the sunrise! While getting up early with the baby on vacation was not exactly fun, being able to watch some beautiful sunrises made it enjoyable. Not to mention the yummy coffee that my father-in-law always had ready for me when I woke up! :)

William had a great time seeing his Gramzy and Papa Dan and Aunt Lissa, as well as meeting his Great Grandparents, great-aunt and great-uncle, and cousins!

Zachary was having fun too! He was thrilled to show off his Angry Birds shirt to the whole family. :)

Day 4: Another gorgeous Tennessee sunrise!

Zachary was up early that morning, excited to play with family!

The night before Christmas Eve… the tree looked beautiful all lit up with all of the gifts wrapped underneath it!

Day 5: We woke up to a very foggy Christmas Eve morning. Could not see the sunrise that day. :(

We spent the afternoon relaxing and making cookies. YUM!

I let Baby William try his first ever sugar cookie with icing… yes, he loved it!

Zachary had a good time meeting his older cousins, and especially playing with Jessi, who is 12 years old and was the flower girl in our wedding when she was Zachary’s age!

A little blurry, but here’s Z helping William open a present!

Zachary and Gramzy playing Angry Birds Star Wars during a break from the big family dinner.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post — snapshots from the drive home!

Here’s me and William at breakfast at our Comfort Suites hotel. This was right before he dumped half a glass of orange juice in my lap. Oops!

Zachary, having a blast!

One of the dolphins who performed in the dolphin show.

I thought these jellyfish looked magical!

Cool looking orange jelly.

Little blue squishies!

Hello, little yellow fishie!

School of fish.

This funny penguin was really showing off. I enjoyed watching these cute little guys!

The albino alligators really fascinate me. The first time I saw an albino gator was at the gator sanctuary in St. Augustine. I was excited to see that they had a few of them at the Aquarium and spent a few minutes watching them with Zachary and photographing them.

Z said his favorite was the Whale Shark. We caught a glimpse of another one before we left.

Atlanta was super rainy and wet that day. The wet, foggy theme permeated our whole drive up to TN. It was beautiful though!

We stopped to change a diaper while driving through the Smoky Mountains! Such gorgeous scenery!

Adrian photographed the same scene. This one is his image. Whose do you like better? :)

A foggy view at Tallulah Gorge, GA.

The sunset was beautiful through the trees.

Not to mention, the way the light reflected on the road. It was very magical to drive through. I love that kind of weather, and I really love it when driving through the mountains.

Tomorrow I’ll post the images from our visit to my mother-in-law & father-in-law’s home in TN!

I’m going to split up these photo posts so as not to overload my blog! :)

Here are some pictures from the beginning of our Road Trip. Since Adrian drove the whole way, I took lots of photos from the road :)

Birds flying into the sun

Quick stop on the road — William was a happy traveler!

We made another stop in Gainesville, where I went to school at the University of Florida (Go Gators!). I love Gainesville and it always makes me a little nostalgic when we stop here on a road trip!

Love the mossy trees in Gainesville.

Zachary enjoyed wearing his shades… and asking a million times if we were at Gramzy’s house yet!

Little travelers at night before we arrived at the hotel in Atlanta.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post — visiting the GA Aquarium!

I took a ton of photos while on the trip, as you can imagine, but haven’t had a chance to go through them yet, as I’ve been so busy with the kids since our return last week…. so today’s photo is an Instagram. :)

This was taken in North Carolina while on the road, and I particularly love it because you can see the famous “purple mountain majesty” in the horizon as we headed towards TN. The drive to TN is one of my favorites (once you get out of Florida) since you really see so many beautiful spots in the South.  Our country is truly gorgeous.

Here are some of my favorite images of NYC from my trip there in 2008:

I was pregnant with Zachary in this photo!

A friend of mine shared this fun National Parks Transit Authority subway map with me on Facebook and I had to go searching for it via Google. It was designed for the Sierra Club, and you can see the original source page here.

Adrian and I have made it a mission to explore as many of our country’s national parks as we possibly can, especially now with the kids, and so far we’ve been to a few of them. The ones we’ve traveled to already are: Glacier Bay, Mount Rainier, Grand Canyon, Zion, Great Smoky Mountains, and I’ve also been to Everglades, though Adrian hasn’t had his trip to the Glades yet- something that must be remedied! I’m sure I’ve also been to Biscayne at some point in my life (school field trip maybe), since it’s just right around the corner. One day, I would love to say I’ve been to ALL of our amazing National Parks. The United States has so much to offer!

Which parks have you been to? Which ones are you looking forward to visiting someday?

This is a fun post to put together because I’ve traveled to so many different places! Unfortunately, I don’t have all of my travel photography on my computer, since much of my traveling was done pre-digital photography. I do have a couple of awful scans that are about 10 years old! But all of my photos really need to be re-scanned in high-resolution.

Anyway– I’ve done a lot of cruising in my life. I’ve been to Scandinavia, England, Alaska, the Caribbean, Mexico, and more! My dad is in the cruise/travel industry, so we’ve gone to many places. here is an image of me at about 16 years old posing on deck on a Caribbean cruise:

I also had the opportunity to take a cruise with my parents to Egypt, Israel, and other places along the Mediterranean when I was in high school. Here’s a (pretty awful scan, sorry) photo of me atop a camel on our visit to the Pyramids! It was such a fun experience:

For our honeymoon in 2004, Adrian and I went to Cozumel, Key West, and Belize. In Belize we visited the Mayan ruins of Xunantunich and climbed up one of the pyramids there too! Here is a picture of me on one of the ruins:

One of my favorite trips was to San Francisco back in 2007. I posted a few of those images to my blog a couple of years ago, but you can see one of my favorite shots of myself here:

In December 2006 and January 2007, we took a trip to Arizona for a family event. Adrian and I decided to spend some time road tripping through Arizona and Utah and then up to Las Vegas. Adrian grew up in Arizona, so this was a special trip for me since I enjoyed seeing all of the places he loved visiting as a child. Here’s one of our self-portraits from our road trip. We pulled off the side of the road to get this shot. It was SUCH an awesome trip!

We’ve also been to Washington DC a couple times. The first time was in Fall 2007. Adrian and I were shooting a wedding in Georgia and decided to turn it into a road trip! Here I am in front of the Capitol:

And here I am in Georgia — seeing a cotton field for the first time! As we drove by the cotton fields, I kept thinking it was snow! LOL! This picture makes me want to grow my hair long again. :)

In 2008, we had another family event to attend and took a trip up to Boston and New York City! Visiting Boston during the summer, I was struck by how intensely beautiful the flowers were! Walking through the city, I could not stop taking photos of flowers. This is one of my favorites!

In NYC, we visited my sister-in-law and spent a lot of time walking around the city. It was tough walking around because I was about 6 months pregnant with Zachary, but LOADS of fun! We visited FAO Schwarz where I got to see their huge Harry Potter section and buy some toys for Zachary, who was due to arrive just a few months later!

When Zachary was 5 months old, we took our first road trip with him — up to Tennessee to visit Adrian’s parents! It was a great trip and he was such an easy baby to travel with — beginning a trend of many road trips for us. Here’s baby Zachary with his Daddy, visiting a vintage train:

In June 2009, we photographed a wedding in the Chicago area and spent a couple days enjoying the city! Of course we had to go and see the famous “bean” and take a photo. You’ll find us in the very bottom of the image – my watermark actually runs through us – and you can see me in my purple top and Adrian is pointing to where we are. :) A couple years ago, I posted some images from this trip on my blog so you can check them out if you’d like.

In October 2010, we visited San Diego for another family wedding! While we were there, my good friend Hillary from Stills by Hill did our first family session! It was a momentous trip because it was Zachary’s first time on an airplane. We had so much fun!

Our next really big trip was a cruise to Alaska with Adrian’s family in 2010! Here we are in one of the ports.

We also spent some time in Seattle and visited Mt. Rainier. We saw some pretty cool falls on the drive up to the mountain! And yes, I do wear that University of Florida hat on EVERY vacation! LOL!

In 2011, our big trip of the year was an absolutely EPIC road trip during the summer, up to Washington DC, Vermont, Philadelphia, and North Carolina. I shot a wedding in Vermont, so we stayed in Burlington for a week and saw all the sights, including the Ben & Jerry’s headquarters and going berry picking, my favorite! We also took Zachary to the Udvar-Hazy Air & Space Museum in Washington DC – his first time visiting DC. Here are two photos, one of Zachary in the raspberry patch, and one of me and Zachary in front of the Enterprise space shuttle.

In December 2011, we took two more trips. The first trip is to Disney World – Zachary’s first time – a birthday gift courtesy of my awesome parents! He had a great time and really loved everything at EPCOT the best. Here is a picture of Zachary and Adrian looking at the fish after riding The Seas Finding Nemo ride. My parents actually took most of the photos on this trip, and while I did get a disc from my dad recently, I haven’t been at the computer that much, and haven’t combed through it yet! I liked this picture though, because Zachary loves ANY kind of animal- even fish!

Our second trip in December ’11 was to The Florida Keys, this time with Adrian’s parents and sister. It was also Zachary’s first time at the Keys and we really enjoyed the beautiful scenery and great seafood. Zachary also enjoyed making sand angels for the first time, too!

And that’s it! That’s for following along and enjoying this massive photo post! There are a few places that I’ve left out – like a few more repeat trips to Tennessee and a trip to St. Augustine, and some other Caribbean cruises… but these are some of my favorite locations that we’ve visited and I look forward to sharing more as we keep on traveling – including sharing more photos from trips that I never fully shared online (namely our vacation out West in 2006 and our honeymoon cruise in 2004)!

I know already that later this year we plan to visit TN again, possibly visit Disney again with my parents for Zachary’s birthday, and in 2013 we’ll be taking a trip to Florida’s beautiful west coast. I’m sure photographing our vacations will get a little more challenging with a 2nd child in tow, but I hope I can take lots more fun photos and capture as many memories as possible!