Snap Crackle Pop!!!

This morning I woke up to the sound of.... well I wasn't sure what it was at first. In the state of confusion I'm usually in right when I wake up, I couldn't tell if it was POURING rain on our tin roof, or firecrackers going off (Yes when it rains hard, the sound can be confused to firecrackers, don't be jealous:). It was neither. It was the sugar cane field being burned to get ready to harvest.

There have been sugar cane fields burning around here for the past few weeks (or a couple months maybe) and I have been wondering when Reddy (our landlord/neighbor) would burn his. Since we live right next to it I was looking forward to witnessing it! A few days ago we were going past our house on the boat and saw the field burning. I was so bummed because I wanted to be there, up close and personal. And I wanted to see it burn at night... I thought it would be more dramatic that way and make for a better photo op. Turns out they only burned half of it. Lucky me!

So I woke up grabbed my camera and headed out to get a few shots of the guys hard at work. It's pretty amazing that they clear the whole entire field by hand! No machinery is used to cut the cane. Its just a bunch of guys with their cane knives. The only machinery used is for transporting the stuff!

Hard at work:

Oops! I've been spotted!

Here's Reddy taking some juice to the workers:

Taking a break:

Off to quench the thirst of more hard working men:

Some burnt sugar cane:

And of course Mochi was happy to be out tromping through the remains of the cane :)

And this is just outside our house and I thought it was pretty :)

Thanks for stopping by!

I know this doesn't show you much about what we've been up to but there's more to come :)

Fiji!

I'm gonna try to blog again!!! Here are a few photos from our first month here in Fiji! This first one is kinda funny... it's where Stuart would have been going to school if things had gone as planned...

We spent our first few days in Suva looking for housing and checking thing out. We would jump on the bus and go into town or over to USP to get some stuff done. The buses are pretty awesome! Nice and open... they blast the music, unfortunately its the super irritating stuff (and the same 5 songs).

The beautiful beaches of FIJI:

Pretty stinky actually.... I don't know if Suva has any pretty beaches, I didn't see any. But this is where we would have lived.

This is the guard in front of the President's House. They're not supposed to talk or smile or anything... but we got him to talk... just barely, and through closed lips hahah! Stuart was speaking Fijian and he said it freaked him out! Ha!

Thats our green bus we always took to get back to where we were staying:

Me on the sea wall at Suva Harbor... there's actually a pretty fun wave out there that would have been our home break... but Tavarua/Namotu waves are better :) And there's way more options! Plus it's FREE! Can't beat that!

Hare Krishna Ice cream!

One day we went up to see Stuart old Mission President who is now the temple president... Jolly little couple!

Here's the Suva Temple! Beautiful... this shot was taken by the Security guard we were hanging out with while waiting for the Woolley's to come home.

Here we are on our way to our very first surf in Fiji!

Stuart waxing up his new board for the first time!

We had to go out from the Resort Waidroka (a beautiful spot) but it was pretty pricey)

Since it was our first time out, neither one of us wanted to play photographer so this was the only shot we got .

We moved out of Suva while we were trying to figure out what we were going to do and landed in Pacific Harbour. In a place called Arts Village. We had a cute little flat there.

It had the best pool ever that we would go play in every day! Tiki Pool Bar!

No one else was ever there so we had the place to ourselves... yeah thats a slide coming out of the Tiki man's head :)

I've never tried to post a video on here so we'll see how this goes :)

This was the view from our window!

We loved our little place in Arts Village while we were there but we were ready to leave when we did. And we're loving our new home in the West! The West is Best!!!

Hopefully I'll post more soon!!!

hug the ones you love

Some friends of ours have suffered something i hope I never have to experience... I posted more details on my Photography Blog so please visit that for more details and to see how you can help. And if you want to help some other way, let me know.

Moms and Dad's out there hug your little ones... and even your big ones. Some people don't have that Luxury. And you don't have to be a mom or dad... everyone, just hug the ones you LOVE!

You can visit Natalie's Blog to get to know her if you aren't lucky enough to know her already.

I hope....

You had a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS! And are planning on having a HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!! So I had planned on getting Christmas Cards out, we even had a little photo shoot for it... then things got busy, so I thought about Making them New Years Cards.... but haven't gotten around to those photos yet... so I threw this together and decided to put it up here for all to see! Sorry you won't be getting a card in the mail from us this year, but this will just have to do. I think this photo is quite Christmasy. We were all bundled up on our trip to New York.



Thanks to Evan for this shot!

I NEED YOUR HELP!!! This will take less than minute!

I have entered to win a scholarship to the Mike Colon Workshop in Honolulu next month. And I need YOUR help to win! All you need to do is go to his blog and cast your vote for yours truly! This is an amazing opportunity that I don't want to miss! What do you get out of this you ask?

To sweeten the deal, and entice you into voting and getting your friends to vote also... here's my proposal: If I win the scholarship, I will be holding my very own giveaway right here on my blog. I will be offering one lucky reader a free photo shoot! Don't live in Hawaii? I'll figure something else out equally as awesome (or we can save it for when I'm in your area)!

VOTE NOW!!! Voting will end at 5pm PST.

And because every post is better with a photo... I leave you with this shot from Valley of the Temples

New York: Day 6

On day six we set out to walk around the city a little bit. We wanted to go to the Cathedral at Columbia that we had walked by on our first day in the city. On our way, we came across this... the restaurant on Seinfeld.




We found A cathedral but it wasn't the one we were looking for... still a beautiful building. We took a look around inside and it was HUGE! Crazy how things get bigger once you're inside.


We walked around who knows where for a while and hopped on a bus... bad idea, at least at the time that we decided to do it! We wanted to get for one point to another and on the subway it would have taken us 20 minutes max (at least i think)... we sat on the bus probably for an hour. It was a cool experience though... We saw all the Nannies picking up the little private school kids and taking them home on the bus.



We wanted to see South Pacific to see a different type of show from In the heights. In the heights was set in todays time and South Pacific is a classic that I grew up watching (vhs). We couldn't resist taking some photos in front of the big sign!


I'd say we did an okay job with setting the camera on a bench and doing a timer shot.



After we picked up our tickets we headed back to our favorite place to eat TAIM in the Village. As I sit her blogging about this my mouth waters and my tummy grumbles! This place was SOOO good!






While we were running across town for dinner and back to Lincoln Center for the show, I had somehow LOST our Tickets!!! Uh oh! Thank goodness I paid with a credit card and the guy we bought them from was still there at the ticket window. So he was able to reprint them for us! I got super lucky on that one! I think I would have cried!


While we were watching the show it started to rain, we didn't have an umbrella but we didn't mind... we just ran to to the subway and it takes you so close to anywhere you need to go! It's amazing!


One more day in New York! Coming soon!


I WANT SOME FALAFEL!!! Can anyone suggest any here in hawaii?!?!? I'm sure I can find some somewhere in town, I just have to look for it!

New York: Day 5

Another awesome day in New York! We started the day off by going to Grand Central Station. What a cool place that is! We just went inside and took a look around for a bit.


On our way out there was this big open area that look like it was roped off but not really. No one was there and we just wanted to go walk around and sit on the benches. As we walked up we noticed there was something left on the bench. As we got closer it looked like an iPod touch or iPhone. sure enough when we got there it was an I phone. We opened it up to see if we could find a number to call to return it. We called the last number the person called and it was the woman's husband. He told us where she worked so we set off to return it to her... but not before taking some self portraits with her phone! hahah!

Here's stuart on the phone:


After our wild goose chase trying to find this lady we met up with Evan for a quick lunch. I forget what it was called but it was another rueben sandwich kind of place and oh so tasty. It was right down the street from this cool building (the flat iron building).



Stuart took this picture... see me?



We really wanted to see a Broadway show and were told to try and get tickets through the lottery they hold the day of. We were trying to get tickets for "In the Heights". They only have so many available so you line up and at a certain time a lady comes out tells you to write your name on a paper and whether you want 1 or 2 tickets. You have to come back in and hour or so and she will draw names until all the tickets are gone. Me, Stuart, Tam, and Evan all filled one out for 2 tickets each to better our odds. We were feeling lucky and Tamara and Evan's name both got pulled so we were all able to see it! Tickets were cheap and such good seats!!! We were FRONT AND CENTER! It was an awesome show full of great music and dancing and some very likable characters. Here we are so excited about our tickets!



Here we are after the show in Time square!


What a fun day!!!! More fun is sure to come, so stay tuned!!!