One of the most amazing things about Florida are the Keys. I was a little girl when I went all the way down to Key West and still remember the celebration on the pier at sunset. The clown with his striped pants and big hair walking in stilts, the funky, contagious sound of the steel drums playing, the Hell's Angels crew...errrr, maybe not the entire crew, but you know when you're a little girl, anyone on a bike with a beard is a Hell's Angel..the smell of the sea and the taste of the breeze tainted with sea salt. And of course, that which we were all celebrating-- the magnificent sunset. It's really amazing to feel you can just grab the sun and when you see a Key West sunset, that's exactly what you feel like you can do. I've never been back there, but boy do I long to go. Of course, Key West is not at all what it was like back then-- the streets are now laced with Banana Republic stores and Fat Tuesdays, but for all its commercialization, there isn't anything that can take away the magic of that pier at sundown.
I digress... there's really a whole host of little Keys, some better known than others. Here in Miami we're spoiled by amazing beaches and well, the Keys doesn't have any. You are flanked by gorgeous blue-green water on either side of you, but it's rocky, shell infested terrain--not at all the smooth and fine sand you find on our coast. And, tuh! being even more spoiled by yearly vacations to dream Caribbean spots doesn't help out the Keys' cause in trying to woo us for their beaches. But their culture? The way they live? That's an entirely different story. We went to one of the upper Keys (upper means closer to Miami, which means shorter road trip, which means win-win with young children) for my FIL's birthday. As much as I love a big family, it is so at odds with what I was raised with that it is very difficult for me to feel relaxed and in my element. I'm a social butterfly by nature, so being reclusive is a completely foreign state of mind for me. Luckily, I can hide behind my camera.
When cousin Maureen is there, I can usually hide behind her, too. :)
Do you know how hard it is to find a couple you like being with? Or fitting in with your significant other's best friend's significant other? Yeah. I don't have that problem at all with Elda. Unfortunately, we don't see each other enough. I wonder if she knows how pretty she looks in this picture.
I have so many cousins in Peru and Chile. I found a few of them on Facebook a couple days ago, but I haven't had the courage to friend request them yet. I never grew up with any of my cousins. I love it when I see my kids playing with theirs.
Bry thinks the frosting is the best part.
For the longest time, Jonathan was all mine. But, the older he gets, the more I have to share him with Papi. It's pretty amazing to see the bond between these two grow.
I'm really lucky my kids are explorers. If not, we may have never stumbled upon or dared to take out this fabulous canoe. It was low tide and the canoe really had nowhere to go, which was just perfect.
It takes Bry a while to warm up. He's overwhelmed in these situations at the same time he finds comfort in being protected by those he knows understand. This day, it was Jonathan and his cousin Ilyse.
Sometimes, Bry never does really warm up and prefers being the quiet, observant Bry. People often see him this way and say things like "oh he's mad" or "look at how serious!" and it pains me to think that he is misunderstood even for a second.
It was time to bring the canoe back in, but the tide had gotten so low that there wasn't any water to facilitate such a daunting task. I love how these pictures show Jonny's brain working.
I could bore you with pictures of my boys playing in the sand, but enough of the overexposed pictures. The sunlight was a real bitch.
Sometimes, I just look at my kids and know they're old souls. Like here, where Jonathan is channeling Richard Nixon.
At the end of a long weekend, there's nothing like coming home to your own backyard where you can just swing naked. I'll tell you one thing about Bryan...if you can get him to be like this around you, then you know you've found a special place in an amazing little boy's heart.
Alright, so speaking of overexposure, what the hell can I do about that? The sun really killed alllllll these pictures and I had to work super hard to get them to look decent. Before you start getting all technical, I do not for a second know how to work my camera and take all these pictures on automatic settings. After July, I'll be able to sign up for that photography course I've been wanting to take, but until then, I'm pretty happy with my automatic focus. In the end, I think the bad lighting and washed out look worked well to really bring home that off the beaten path culture you'll find in the Keys, but I wish I could say I'd done it on purpose.
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