I love Mondays.  My weekends typically consist of a a wedding on Saturday, church on Sunday and rest on Monday.  Mondays are our sabbath.  They are a “day of rest”.  I don’t do E-mail, phone calls, or editing.  It’s a day to enjoy the wife, the kids, and the life I have been blessed with.

One of my favorite places to eat is also big on taking a day off.  I know this has happened to you.  You’re hungry, you know what you want, you pull into the drive through giddy that the line is not long and then you realize… It’s Sunday.  Chick-Fil-A is closed.  A restaurant closed on Sunday.  The busiest out to eat day of the week and they are closed.  It’s basically like me saying I’m a wedding photographer who does not shoot Saturday weddings.  Chick-Fil-A is so convinced that people need a day of rest that they are willing to lose hundreds of millions of dollars a year for it.  I figure I can skip a few Monday voicemails. Right?

It has not always been like this for our house but back in 2004 I heard a talk by a guy named Rob Bell.  He talked about just how important rhythm and rest were to our bodies.  He talked of the importance of slowing down. The idea resonated with us and we were hooked.  At first taking a day off was hard.  I really do love my job so editing, learning, and shooting are never things I dread.  Taking a break is not always easy.  You have to “plan” for a day of nothing. (Example: I wrote this post on Thursday.)  Little by little though I have been able to “turn off” the part of my brain that likes to work and create.

Our kids LOVE Sabbath.  It’s a day when they know Danielle and I are both fully present.  They know that we are theirs and phone calls or Facebook won’t pull us away.  We are completely emerged in them and we play harder that day than any other day of the week.  It’s how I refill my creativity so that I can pour all of it out the following week.

List of things that are “Sabbathy”
Legos
Bubbles
Cake
Tea Parties
Video Games
Dates
Trampolines

Some “non-Sabbathy” things
E-mail
Laundry
Editing your amazing wedding images
Facebook
iPhones
Paying bills

Your list may look different.  You may not even have a list.  This whole post may seem like a crazy ridiculous stupid idea to you.  That’s OK, you don’t have to do this.  My advice though is try it for 3 months.  Set aside a day of rest.  No talking about work, no doing it, no E-mail.  Want to go really crazy?  Don’t think or plan about your wedding.  It may seem impossible, but you can go 24 hours without looking at a color swatch.  You’ll be amazed how refreshed and eager you are to jump back into the planning if you take little time off from it.  Like I said, you may think I’m crazy, but all I know is Mondays are my favorite day of the week. :)

No wedding goodness today, just a quick shot of Luke and his cake.  He’s turning 3 and it’s time for the party.
(Danielle knocked this one out of the park.)
I’m off to eat cake.

I can’t even begin to explain how much fun we had at Disney World.  I’m consumed with getting us back there.  I tried to pan a return trip for this September, but Danielle vetoed it.  One side note.  I didn’t take my “real” camera to the park with us.  Everything you see was shot from our iPhone 4s.  I didn’t want to be one of “those dads” constantly stopping to shoot photos and missing the whole experience.  It blew me away with how great it is as a camera.  We took tons of photos and HD video and loved loved loved not having to cary anything around.  On to the images.

Here we are 1 minute into the park.  (Keep this in your memory as a reference photo.)

Some boudoir photography of Minnie’s bloomers

Sara was so excited to ride the Dumbo ride…
…because she knew Danielle rode it when she was about her age.
Here’s a great shot of the kids with the mice while Eli plummets towards the earth below.

We love us some Buzz Lightyear in this house.

Luke made us ride the Buzz ride about 10 times while we were there.

This was the 1st time Jo & Sara ever rode a roller coaster of any kind.  I didn’t tell them what to expect and you’ll see at about the 23 second mark that Sara is holding on for dear life. :)
Once the ride ended they were both hooked.  They then went on to ride everything they could at the park.

Sara was right at the hight requirement for Space Mountain and she loved every minute of it.  Jo was a bit more “cautious”.

Remember that happy photo?  Here we are at the end of the day. :)

Sara fell asleep during the night parade.  Jo kept shaking her trying to wake her up to see the princesses, but she would have no part of it.
I didn’t take this photo, but Disney, E-mailed it to me so I figured you would like looking at it. :)

Last week we took a little family vacation.  The idea for this vacation came about 8 or 9 months ago when I first saw this video by Jon Rawlinson.  It’s footage from the worlds 2nd largest aquarium located in Japan and it’s fantastic.  My kids loved watching it and I jumped right to Google to see what we had here in the states.  Well , as it turns out Atlanta is home to the worlds LARGEST aquarium.  The have whale sharks!!

Vacation Destination Achieved!

Somewhere on the road to Atlanta Danielle mentioned that DisneyWorld was only 7 hours away, but she figured I was to “old” to add that in as a spur of the moment vacation stop. :)  Well, I showed her. :)  So, after about 2,500 miles of driving we are back and I present you with photos.

Sara really enjoyed the front facing camera on the iPhone4.  At one point she filmed a 15 minute monologue.  It’s riveting.

From the moment we had out trip planned I knew I wanted this photo at the aquarium.
I can’t explain how giddy I was when I actually saw it on my big computer screen.  We are ordering the biggest print we can and hanging it in our house.

This was Elis’ 1st trip to the beach.  He felt “safest” on the sand.  You’ll see why later.

Sara the mud model.

Here is Eli’s first trek out into the ocean.  :)

Check back tomorrow for Disney photos.

Hey, remember back in 2002 when Spider-Man  & A Walk to Remember came out?

Or when Avril Lavigne was singing Complicated & Eminem was cool because he had that song Lose Yourself?

You remember when iPods looked like this and were HUGE!

You remember when Alex & Danielle got married at 10:00 AM on June 22, 2002?

I do.