Hilton Head Island, SC

Last summer I was blessed to have an opportunity to visit Hilton Head Island in South Carolina.  I've always heard from friends who frequent this area how beautiful it is so I was excited to see for myself.  Armed with my camera I captured some of the sights and I wasn't disappointed.  

Stayed at the Westin Hilton Head Island Resort & Spa a beautiful beach front property.  I spent my days lounging around the pool sipping tropical drinks and strolling the beach and every evening exploring some of the areas fine cuisine.  John insisted I have my first taste of what appeared to be a giant sea loogie, otherwise known as the oyster.  Upon planning the trip he'd threatened me with this possibility. I figured that perhaps I could distract him or perhaps charm my way out of this situation but John is nothing if not persistent and let's just say he's well suited for the job he's currently in (sales). He'd been talking these things up during the weeks prior to our trip.  It took a lot of coaxing and a monumental amount of courage (and perhaps a libation or two if I'm not mistaken) to convince me to try one of the seas most unappealing creatures. I thought that since one of my favorite gems, the pearl, comes from these nasty little things, I ought to at least give em a chance. My opinion... eh... just as I suspected... snot & boogers coated with cocktail sauce. Thanks but no thanks.

John took this shot and for Christmas I had it printed on canvas and gallery wrapped for him 

The view from our table at The Old Oyster Factory

Sea Loogies

Joel Gott Cabernet Sauvignon. Our 'go to' wine ever since. Delicious!

One morning I woke with the sunrise and decided to grab my camera and head for the beach.  This is, after all, the east coast, the sun rises over here.  Unless you're a photographer the idea of crawling out of bed in the wee hours whilst on vacation is probably a horrible idea, but all my photog buddies out there TOTALLY get this.  There is nothing quite like that morning light.  So off I went on my solo adventure on what must have been one of the most humid mornings I've ever experienced.  It probably took my lenses a full 30 minutes to adjust the extreme conditions and stop fogging up.  On one of the shots I just worked with the steam. It turned out to be one of my favorite shots.  Nothing like a little fog to make a shot look mysterious and romantic, dontcha think.....?

At work

Me & a good book and I wouldn't be budging from this spot

Ireland

Coumeenole Beach

I know, I know.... all TWO of you who follow my blog have been wondering where the heck I've been. Well as you can see I was out of the country for a while and upon my return all heck broke loose, personally and professionally. I'll spare you the details of my personal drama and just say that this is a busy time of year for family 'tog's... seniors and families seeking to have some stuff shot before Christmas.... PHEW!

Before I get into work stuff I'd like to share a few snaps from my amazing trip to Ireland. A few details about my trip... landed in Dublin, Ireland at 8:30 am, which is 2:30 am CST and traveled straight through to Dingle, Co Kerry and stayed in a lovely little B&B overlooking Slea Head and Coumeenole beach. After a few days there I traveled up to Galway and then back to Dublin a week later to catch my flight home. Was a whirlwind and I so wish that I'd had at least 10 days just to help recover from the jet lag and to take my time a bit more. But I'll be back!

Here's some stuff from Co. Kerry and Dingle. I'll put up my Galway stuff in a few days... Enjoy!

Burtnett Summer Vacation 2009 (Part 1)

Okay, so I know you all have been anxiously awaiting to hear about our trek across America, well the southeast...I know, I know we've been back a while but I had over 300 photos to go through and edit and it seems like we've been SO busy since the moment we arrived home. Well, I finally got to sit down and go through all the pictures this week so here's a little portion of the trip, I'm gonna break it down into a couple of days. Let me start out by warning you that this trip had a lot of ups and downs. It seems we were under attack the entire time, I learned a lot about myself that I never realized and a lot about what it means to be a "camper" in the southeast.

Shortly after we arrived at our first stop we all hopped out of the truck and began our set up process of plugging stuff in and leveling and what not. BTW, we ROCK at this, we definitely look like pros out there. After Steve hooked up the water and turned it on we ran into our first "surprise". Water filter was busted because we were lazy this year and neglected to winterize the ol trailer...bummer. Well, I'm a trooper! I sucked it up, put on my happy face, cracked a couple jokes in true Aly style and grabbed my toiletry bag and headed for the bath house. No biggie, I've been a tent camper before and this how I used to roll all the time. Well, back in my tent camping days I didn't have a 32 year old, mama of four babies, body that needs to take a nightly 3am potty break. But I soldiered on, I layed in bed until 3:30 when I gave up trying to hold it and grabbed a sweatshirt and slipped into my flip-flops and hiked to the closest bath house just a few trailers down from us, praying that no critters would greet me on the way. Not so bad really, kinda nice, had the joint to myself and saw some pretty stars on the way back. Crawled back in bed with dusty feet and woke up at 5:30 to repeat the process. Steve apologized profusely and promised to hit a local Camping World to get the stuff he needed to make the repairs so that this would not happen again..."Ok baby, thanks, you're the best!"

We stayed in Stone Mountain, GA which is just outside of Atlanta. Stone Mountain is this really, really cool "resort" (for lack of a better word) it is comprised of hotels and an enormous campground that is built around this enormous...stone mountain. There is a golf course and a lake, hiking trails and the coolest nightly laser show I have ever seen.

Day one in Georgia we were taking our Marine Biologist and shark expert son, Weslee to the Georgia Aquarium. But first we needed to find an urgent care, Steve believed he had some kind of UTI, he was having some low back pain & urgency and frankly, I was pretty worried, he had his tough face on, so I knew he was much worse than he was telling me. We found a local CVS but after waiting quite a while they informed him that they don't treat UTI for men, only women. Steve felt guilty about making the kids wait all morning so against my pleading we headed to the aquarium.

It was incredible! We petted sharks and rays, watched as an enormous Whale Shark swam inches from our faces, laughed at the otters and oohed and aahhed. Surprise #2, we took a bathroom break...again. Steve walks out of the bathroom with a smirk on his face and clutching a paper towel in his hand. He states "It's not a UTI" and opens up the paper towel and inside is the BIGGEST kidney stone I have ever seen! WOW! We were both immediately thankful, it could have been so much worse, he's had stones half that size that caused 10 times more pain.

On the way back to the campground we picked up the stuff we needed to fix the water filter and headed "home" and grilled some burgers and dogs with Uncle Jeff and took a dip in the pool, showered and headed up to watch the laser show. They blasted music over the field and we boogied while we waited with a couple hundred other folks, for the show to start, Kolby played some sweet air guitar on his light saber and entertained us all. It was a beautiful, warm, breezy evening. The show started and they played music by artists from GA (B-52's, Ray Charles, Sugarland, etc) and music about Georgia, they did a tribute to our soldiers and finished off the show with some fireworks and a little "Devil Went Down to Georgia". It was so cool!

We said goodnight to Uncle Jeff and crashed hard that night exhausted from a very busy day. Unfortunately, Steve wasn't able to get the water thingy fixed because he had the wrong size whatchamacallit so I trekked to the bathroom again around 3am and did my business, this time with a little less enthusiasm but still kept my game face on so as not to hurt my poor husbands feelings, he was not happy about this either after all so, me having a stinky attitude wasn't going to help anybody.

We all slept in the next morning and took our time over breakfast and began packing up to head to Myrtle Beach, SC, where hopefully the water filter would get repaired and we could get settled in a beautiful campsite by the beach. HA!

Spring Break

A ridiculous excuse for a bridge!

Some of the locals

For spring break this year Grandpa Bob decided to kidnap all our kids and take them down to Gulf Shores for a little beach time leaving Steve and I to PART-AY! We were immediately overwhelmed by the possibilities. After much debating we decided to not stray too far from home. So, we headed for the Smokey Mountains for some hiking.

It snowed the first day so we hung out in the hot tub in our little chalet and headed down into the cute little town of Gatlinburg and had dinner at Bubba Gump's. Day two was sunny and gorgeous so after we discussed the possibilities we decided to hit the trails. When we were loading up in the car to head out I noticed that the passenger side door was covered in muddy paw prints. Upon closer examination we determined that they were from a bear or bears who were jonesin for some of our fig newtons on the front seat. Yikes!

Ramsey Cascades is where we headed. It is an 8 mile round trip hike that climbs over 2,000 feet...the entire hike is literally uphill...in the snow. We had to cross two teeny-weeny "bridges" (I use that term loosely because it was a tree trunk cut in half with some sticks nailed to ONE side to give you something to hold onto as you crossed...did I mention said "bridge" was also covered in ice and hovering about 12 feet over a rushing river filled with jagged rocks) as we climbed higher the snow got higher too. Needless to say we were exhausted by the time we got back to our car and made good use of the hot tub upon our return. On our way to dinner we saw a black bear walking up the neighbors driveway! Steve jumped out to take some pictures while I waited and prayed in the car that they didn't eat him.

The next day we did a 5 mile hike that lead to a beautiful waterfall that you could walk behind. We encountered 3 more bears on this hike who were foraging for some goodies in the woods. They ignored all of us as we snapped some pictures. They were very cute! It was an awesome week and so good to reconnect without our kids. Thanks Grandpa Bob!

Burtnett's Across America

Yosemite

The Redwoods

Mount Rushmore

San Francisco

After talking about it for the last few years we've decided that this is the year that we will trek across the U.S. to check out this great country we live in. The kids all seem to be an appropriate age and we're not getting any younger. We'll be making our first stops in St. Louis and then onto Mt Rushmore. We plan to hit as many major National Parks as we can and them home to Sac. and down the West Coast taking the southern route back by way of Vegas and the Grand Canyon. We are all super excited! We will stop in Sacramento to visit family for a few days and we'd love it if some of you wanted to join us if we come near y'all.

Weekend Getaway

Ruby Falls (1100 feet underground!)

Entertaining the cave dwellers

No paparazzi please

Last weekend we loaded up the peeps and headed outta town with our friends the Kimmel's. We headed to Chattanooga to check out Ruby Falls and the Children's Museum. We had a good time playing with our kids and generally goofing off. Winding through the cave on our way to see the falls was pretty cool. I see more cave exploring ahead for the Burtnett clan. Honestly, I think I just really want a head lamp.

Destin

We're home from our annual beach trip! We had an awesome time but it is always so good to come home.

A few highlights from our trip...

The boys have been bitten by the body boarding bug! They absolutely loved catchin' some waves.

Kolby was riding a wave in on his body board when a stingray swam right in front of him...it was so AWESOME! I can't decide if that makes me a really bad Mom or a really cool Mom that I thought it was awesome.

Hands down the coolest part of our trip went as follows....

Me sitting on the beach watchin' the boys search for shells and building a sand castle with Bailee. I look over to my left and notice a "commotion" in the water about 10 feet off the shoreline. I jump up to go investigate. As I get closer it appears to be a dorsal fin sticking up out of the water! Dolphin? I alert the rest of the family, (when I say "alert" I mean frantically squealing and jumping up and down and waving my arms) Then I start to walk out towards it and stop dead in my tracks...NOT A DOLPHIN....SHARK! A 6 foot long Tiger shark is looking for dinner approximately where my kids were swimming moments earlier. Now we're chasing the thing down the beach kicking ourselves for not having our camera. The strangest part was I wasn't scared at all and neither were the kids. If it hadn't been for the jellyfish we saw earlier I probably would've tried to get closer. (scared of jellyfish but not sharks? I'm an enigma, I know) After about 3 minutes of awe the shark finally took off out to sea and we trekked back to our beach towels. Weslee is a shark enthusiast and proclaimed "This is the best day of my life!" Kolby grabs a body board and heads back out to catch some waves! We feel compelled to be somewhat responsible parents and redirect our kids to the sand. We found out from locals that it is best to stay outta the water during sunset as that is feeding time for the sharks. We celebrated the occasion by purchasing shark tooth necklaces for all the boys. Bailee opted for a pink stuffed Dolphin. We'll never forget that experience.

Keeping with tradition on the last day of our trip we headed to our favorite restaurant The Backporch for a yummy seafood dinner. We were fortunate enough to get seated on the deck overlooking the gulf and as we waited for our food we reminisced over a wonderful week and watched the sunset.