This month’s Bingo was Halloween themed! So was the sunrise that morning apparently. I went as Mrs. Incredible, and my newish friend Jess borrowed my skeleton “costume”, which was great because she’s a physical therapist.
Jess I met at one of the book clubs, and I basically pulled a “YOU’RE MY FRIEND REGARDLESS OF YOUR OPINION” on her, which I semi-apologize for basically forcing her to be friends with me, but I think it’s working out so far. She doesn’t have kids yet, so it makes socializing a bit easier. She’s also a Navy wife, her husband is a SWO (Surface Warfare Officer). She lives close by. It’s destiny, really.
At Bingo we collected food donations for the Thanksgiving food drive to provide food for military families in need of extra support. I wish we took a picture of the table because it was full and that made my heart warm. I also neglected taking any pictures of us actually playing bingo, but we did! Jess won wine.
The whole night was hilarious, and our table was particularly rowdy. At my table there were two Saras, and at one point they went to high five each other for having that name, and out of pure instinct I interrupted the high five by grabbing the arm of one of them next to me. I do not know what overcame me and I apologized and pray I didn’t scare her away (this was only one of multiple things that happened this night that could’ve). She did not seem to have been bothered by the interaction thankfully! The MC wives are such characters! Gotta have fun together to get through this life.
It’s been pretty quiet on the family photography end, both because I’ve been away and because I still don’t have a good enough self image about it to advertise (nor do I really know how to advertise). Anyway, a family posted that their photographer bailed on them, and they were having some personal family things happening that they really wanted to get these photographs done. So I replied to their post and volunteered!
She had already scoped out beaches in our area (it is not lost on me how amazing it is that we even have that option) and picked Waimanalo beach park. If you’ve been following along, I haven’t really posted much about Waimanalo (it’s where we saw sunflowers and it sits between us and the Makapu’u lighthouse). There are a lot of reasons, but mainly it’s because it’s mostly known as native Hawaiian territory. If you drive through that neighborhood you’ll see it is not at all built up, there are tons of local businesses, and there are a lot Hawaiian-esque things about it. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, but some native Hawaiians still have a vendetta against Americans for taking over their land and aren’t incredibly friendly with “haole“. Along one stretch of the beach park is a homeless tent city. I’m painting a really bad picture of this place, in reality it’s not like I hear of incidents happening there often. It’s just somewhere I respect is their territory. All this to say, there are really nice ballfields there and the beach itself is expansive and quiet (which makes for easy photo editing). I pulled into the parking lot closest to the tent city and decided to move to the one closest to the ballfields.
I was apprehensive to have my huge nice camera strapped to me, but once I got out and walked around and saw people of all shapes and sizes my comfort eased a bit. I started walking around and scoping things out and before long the family showed up. Really, I think it comes down to the inherent extra caution growing up as a woman has lent me to think about.
The beach itself is nice, but it doesn’t have palm trees, and the mountains are quite the distance away, so I’m not sure it’s my preferred scenery. I think it’s definitely beneficial it was so quiet, WAY less post editing to clean things up!
The family was a lot of fun. One teen that was having a little attitude about playing along, but he did just enough to capture some gems.
The sun sets behind us, so the color started to show on the clouds, which also made for some nice background. Prior to that, the sky was so bright it was getting a bit washed out. I loved their matching outfits. The little girl wanted some pictures of her and her mom hula dancing with a haku lei, that was fun! We used a huge piece of driftwood as a bench. I’m glad I got out of my comfort zone and did these in Waimanalo. They turned out great. One of the kids had been stung by a Japanese man o war and so I ran into the same issue I had with the other family; the kids were very paranoid they’d step on one on the beach. It made casual walking a bit difficult. We tried a pose with the kids faces inside a heart made by the hands of the parents. I am pretty impressed with how it turned out!
There’s so much to think about with these photoshoots! Is everyone smiling? Looking at the camera? How’s the background, where are the mountains? Are they centered? Is everyone positioned evenly?
I think I most excel at capturing the spontaneous queues, like “Let’s dance” and “3,2,1 jump!” and Shaka pictures. The more structured, perfect ones are harder for me to nail. It’ll come with time!
Also, thankfully, this mom knows how to photo edit, so although I went and did my own thing and sent her a bunch of edits (she’s super busy and still mid-pcs so doesn’t have access to all her stuff), I know she can take the raw material and edit her own way. You can tell some of my horizons aren’t even and the brightness isn’t either… it’s definitely something I’m getting better at reviewing before sending (I’ve had more sessions since this one).
This was a good warm up to what was to come with this past weekend, when I did a bunch of mini photo shoots for a fundraiser for the last boat we were on’s FRG. Post to follow!
I will start this post by saying I’m glad I went to San Diego and saw my husband. However, if you couldn’t tell, we didn’t do much while we were there. Mostly took naps, did laundry, ate out, went for walks… Port calls are the envy of many a military wife because of the sexiness they portray. Seeing your husband in a foreign land and getting to explore mid-deployment… how fun! Realistically, we did a lot of unsexy, mundane, just plane old hanging out together. Brian was very worn out, and at one point I requested pre-boat Brian back… but I know it’s because his job is incredibly difficult. So I gave him time to recover, decompress, we went with the flow of what we were feeling like. He still got calls from the boat while we were out and about, but we did our best to do normal life things (like watch the Capitals). I know this is what love looks like, giving your significant other the support they need going through something rough, even if it doesn’t meet your expectation of what should be happening.
All that to say, we did end up getting to La Jolla, something I requested numerous times before we made happen. La Jolla California is famous for their large sea lion and seal population. And I can confirm personally it’s true!
Even after reading this article, I’m not sure which is which in the above pictures…and I’m too tired to figure it out.
There were so many awesome pics I took. I might come and finish this post later with a little more energy. I will also add that I had my amazing zoom lens on this. While there were a ton of people within maybe 3ft of these guys… Brian and I were well past ten feet away. These are zoomed and cropped.
I am really glad we made our way there to check them out. It was an ~2hr trip, and Brian got a call from the boat, but it filled my desire for a fun adventure and “sexiness”. We also went with Brian’s parents, so they enjoyed the trip as well. I will say the area SMELLS badly, and the parking is not easy, but we were lucky to snag a spot. There were people snorkeling off this beach… which I guess is normal, but no way would I snorkel with these huge guys swimming around! I guess there aren’t as many sea lion/seal attack causes of death as there are sharks… maybe people think I’M crazy for snorkeling in Hawaii.
Later that night we ate dinner at Bali Hai. I wish I had asked the waiter to get a picture. The next morning we dropped Brian off at the boat and his parents dropped me off at the airport and the rest, they say, is history. I have been home the last week catching up on life and doing miscellaneous things. More posts to come! I did Mass, then 5 mini Christmas photo sessions this morning and then a five mile hike this afternoon. Phew! Trying to go to bed but I’m in inning 5 of the world series game 5… what a game!!
The morning before I left to go back to San Diego, Brian’s parents and I went to Dana Point Harbor for a little walk that goes around the top of the cliff point. It was very sandy… like they dumped a beach on the pathway. It was also incredibly sunny. It only took us 30 ish minutes, but it was a nice adventure. It’s also a nature preserve, so it’s only open a few days a week, and a lot of offshoots were closed off for restoration at the time we went.
This is looking north toward Laguna Beach.
Next is looking south. From this path, the cliff blocks the harbor.
But, then, we actually found another, shorter path facing the harbor itself (and toward San Clemente).
This was a great spot for a stroll before lunch on the harbor (which is exactly what we did!)
Phew, I don’t know where this week went but… here I am on Sunday trying to get a couple posts up before my Monday email goes out.
After spending time in San Clemente with Brian’s parents, I headed back down to San Diego because Brian pulled back into port. Here we go with hotel living again! Brian had already visited this aircraft carrier museum, so while he was working one weekend morning I went on an adventure. The inside of the “belly” is HUGE and is a museum in and of itself…
You could spend forever here, but I’m not a spend forever at a place like this person, so I picked a few cool audio tour spots to listen to and then headed to the flight deck. (They gave me an audio device attached to a necklace that you use to scan different codes to listen to stories about planes or parts of the boat). This next picture is looking from one end of the runway toward San Diego. So cool and SO HUGE.
I didn’t realize that the planes had the ability to refuel mid flight, and there were fueling spires(?) they used to do so. That’s incredible. One of the helicopters was the retrieval helicopter for multiple space missions. There were really great views of the bridge from up there.
I love the huge statue of the famous Navy kiss.
One thing you can do is go on a tour of the control tower, lead by a docent. That was fun, and they were complaining about 8ft high ceilings… ha.
They gave the explanation of why they rotated the landing pad 13*, but I forget exactly… something about if things went awry it wouldn’t ruin the planes lined up on the edges I think. This carrier was originally straight on only and then went into the shipyard to have a runway at 13*.
So huge.
This was my favorite capture of the day. See if you can figure out why…
Brian’s mom and I went to visit San Onofre which is a hugely popular surfing spot. Unfortunately there weren’t many surfers… but I still enjoyed walking down a new part of the coast. There’s a nuclear power plant that’s being removed, and we walked right up against it to view the coastline further down(seen above).
Saw this iconic VW van.
There’s one surfer!
It costs something like $10 to park for the day. Or you can buy a pass. There’s plenty of parking, but apparently there’s a forever wait in the summer time and cars line up starting at 4:30am.
My in-laws live about ten minutes from the San Clemente beach, so it’s easy to get out the door and explore the area. T-Street beach is a pretty popular spot for surfing and where Brian and I had our lesson a couple years ago.
There’s a really nice walking path along the beach that stretches at least two miles. Some of the entries are a steep walk down from the main residential area. You can see there are houses precariously close to the edge of the cliffs next to the beach.
Eventually you get past the pier and on this boardwalk which was damaged from some landslides for the longest time, this was only my second time able to walk on it since I first visited in 2018.
I was able to snap some pictures of surfers from the pier.
And observed some Halloween spirit on my walk inland.
It is definitely cooler here than in Hawaii! And I’m often found in my sweater. Still not quite as cold as the Northeast.
Since San Diego I’ve transitioned up to San Clemente to hang out with family. On Saturday we ventured to Palomar Mountain for a quick hike and lunch to celebrate my sister in law’s birthday. There is a fire tower on top that we were able to visit and see the inside of. Visibility was high and you could see the San Diego skyline. (Granted it was tiny)
It was great morning for fresh air and great views! And we did end up spotting a fire! See the smoke?
We ended up at Jilberto’s. I had a taco and it was delicious.
Later we went out for Italian at Casanova’s. I had lobster ravioli.
Brian and I took it pretty easy on Sunday. I am terrible at time change and we both want to take it easy, so we did a leisurely surrey cruise around the mission bay bike path.
Then later we took a boat cruise around the bay on the Bahia Belle.
This is the hotel and the cabanas are relaxing to lay in.
It’s no Lanikai sunrise but the sunset was pretty beautiful.
Brian and I both had to work on Monday, so less fun and probably not a lot of updates coming this week. But it has been really nice to see him!! I even got to tour his submarine!
