our main goals were to find the fremont troll and to have coffee in as few starbucks as possible..

this was the view from our hotel!!! so legit. and just a bike ride away from the downtown area. we did ride bikes there and discovered that washington has a bike helmet law for everyone so we were nerdy tourists with our helmets and cameras.

there’s me taking photos and then the photos i took below!

i had always heard of the gum wall in SLO but have never been to it, apparently there’s one here too. it was just as gross and awesome as you would expect!

we found the first starbucks, just to take a pic but then went and had coffee somewhere else. i can’t believe how many starbucks there are in this dang city!! we did achieve our goal though and found quite a few cute shops to have coffee.

sometimes on trips we get sick of eating out, so we have to find other ways to have meals…and we always bring a laptop with plenty to watch, this time dollhouse

ooh, look! i touched the space needle!

and jared is holding it

and our other goal: achieved! the troll is awesome!

this was in a bathroom

jared, nerding it up in front of google

and fun architecture! yippee!

we drove to some of the other areas surrounding seattle as well, cool places to live and to skip rocks, which if you are wondering, is just as awesome as it used to be. you should do it soon.

Catherine and her mom are both teachers so this is their teacher pose

we had fun with you guys! thanks for the fun shoot

here’s the architect…

elmer gave us a tour and told us some stories behind the treasures

elmer calls this the $60,000 sax. it was his son’s for music school…

apparently there used to be a bagdad, ca..but no longer

here’s jared’s old house

love this old radio as a prop!

big brother caleb didn’t want to be left out of all the fun

we may have spent a bit of time at the bean. i was SO excited to find out that we would get to see the bean!! it’s so cool!

found this cool spot and didn’t want to feel left out so we joined in…

the new batman movies were shot in chicago so looking at some of these areas reminded us of the films

we went to a few antique shops and passed this along the way…what the heck?!?!

this art piece was one of my favorites!

a little mocktography never hurt anyone

can’t have a visit to chicago without their world famous deep dish pizza!!! can we say cheesydeliciousness?? if that’s not in the dictionary, it should be…

chicago at night is just as wonderful as it is in the day, reflection of light is a photographer’s playground!

this is a video art piece fountain, she moves her mouth to spit out water

Class of 2011!! We took this at the end of our shoot and immediately after Becky stepped on a bee and got stung. So good thing we were at the end of the shoot because she’s allergic and we had to get her off the beach!

we were, in fact we were so busy with weddings in 2010 that our 9 days in a row that we had free that whole summer really crept up on us. so we talked about where we wanted to go [everywhere] and narrowed it down to peru and new zealand. peru is closer but when we priced them out, new zealand was much more affordable and faster to get to! so a week before we left, we bought our tickets and headed down under.

the photos below are a bit of a tease unfortunately because we can’t post many of our hobbiton photos until both the hobbit movies come out which i believe will be 2013…boo. ‘hobbiton’ is a working sheep farm in matamata. they found the location for the lotr movies by flying over it in helicopter. they asked the owner if they could work something out to use this as a set for the films. the neat thing is that the owner kept the ‘hobbit holes’ up for people to come visit. we expected to see what you see here, stripped down, but we got a real treat when we realized they were already dressing the set for the hobbit movies which is why we aren’t allowed to post the photos yet.

so we showed up after making a reservation for the tour and it was pouring rain…ya know…their winter. luckily they had boots for us to wear and better umbrellas than we had! turns out we were the only, yes the only people on the tour. this is not the first time i’ve accidentally had a tour all to myself but that’s another story. anyway, we awkwardly hopped in the tour bus and listened to an older man mumble in his kiwi accent for an hour or so as he led us through the town. we were able to wander out and go inside the houses (which i’ll post in two years if the world hasn’t ended). but then it got a little more awkward as we realized that the tour wasn’t over. since it’s a working sheep farm we got to have our very own personal sheep shearing demonstration! yippee. i even got to feed the lambs their bottles, hahaha. this was not our first experience with sheep on a trip either, but that’s another story…

our super nerdy van…just for the two of us and our tour guide, who used the microphone and speakers, haha

our tour guide showing us still frames from the lotr movies

the party tree!

time for sheep shearing…turns out the guy had been to the states a few times so we chatted about that before we got down to business

love his shoes, so authentic!

they are pretty cute, they wag their tails like dogs

travel photography, new zealand, hobbiton, hobbiton new zealand, sheep shearing, travel portraits

enjoy these engagement photos!

there’s a little bit of a rivalry going on with these two

congrats you two! have a great wedding

this guy leonard broke down here in the 80′s, felt that it was meant to be and decided to not only stay but also build on and paint the hillside. he gets donations of paint and bales of hay and this is his creation…enjoy!

we got a pic with leonard, he’s a pretty sweet old guy, i was already on the ‘tour’ when he grabbed my arm and asked me to join the tour…two different times, haha

it’s surprisingly sturdy!

i love that we caught him checking his mail, does the mail really come all the way out to the middle of nowhere?!

jump!