It was my last day in Costa Rica. A perfect day. Warm, beachy, a little overcast…and spent it with some of my very favourite Costa Rica family. This is an incredible company out of the States, with a message that encourages life long adventure with the people who make the happiest. Here is part of my photo shoot with Another Best Day. Check them out, you won’t be disappointed.
One day we drove to Tamarindo. What a hot and spicy, Costa Rican tourist trap this place is. We shopped, we ate, we shopped more, we danced at a surf shop and Charlie picked out his next board, finally we found a guy and his horse on the beach. The day was long and full. I will go back again…without children.
This guy was up every morning (ok, most mornings) at 530am. At first it was too much. After the first…second…third early morning I began to go bed at a decent hour. Joking! I began to really appreciate our time together at the beach. The early mornings are quiet. The beach is cool and the ocean is warm. My wee Charlie could prance around nude to his heart’s content and we didn’t have to struggle over the application of “sun cream“.
Cheers to our little nude monkey. Now that we’re home he’s more than welcome to start sleeping in.
As crazy as vacationing is with young children is (read: 5 hour flight, up at 530am each morning, physical reaction of disgust and horror EVERY time the topic of a life jacket is brought up, same reaction each time “sun cream” is taken out of hiding, same-same again with the hats, the constant fear of sun stroke and first degree burns, and so on) nothing in the world has given me more joy than watching and documenting our baby boys discover and interact with their big world. This family holiday in Potrero Beach, Costa Rica brought two important things to light.
I learned a couple of things about my relationship with my camera + family.
I learned that I don’t shoot Charlie enough in his everyday life. I should do that more for him. He’s experienced a lot of interesting things at his young age.
I learned that I can easily spend too much time with a camera in front of my face. I missed making most of these memories with my son because I was thinking about composing a great shot of him, in perfect light. What I wish? I could spend less time shooting him and more time playing with him. The problem? I like taking picture of my kid on holiday because in real life we don’t do these pretty looking, exciting things.
I have approximately 1 million photos of our 10 day family trip to Potrero, Costa Rica this month (February 2013). I will start here with our Super Boys (in fact most of the photos I took are of our super boys + super boys in CR scenes). They had the time of their lives – when they weren’t aggravating each other. Here you will find them “Shrimp Sucking”…? You might want to do such a thing if you’re looking for free bait. To do this you find a wee bubbling hole in the sand at low tide, you give the gigantic home-made shrimp sucker to the super kids, and voila you are shrimp sucking. Jack is equipment supervisor and Charlie is the lead hand. They were a great team. Such an awesome memory to have.
And then Super Boy number two choses to abandon the job and play solo. A little by yourself beach time at sunset can’t be a bad thing. 
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