Monday, November 21, 2011

Unconditional Love

Today, I'm thankful for the fact that I am comfortable enough in my own skin that I can make a complete a** of myself in public.   For example - my brother and I made up a dance. It's called The Unconditional Love Dance - meaning that a person who loves you unconditionally should continue to love you even after seeing you dance like this (thanks for the video, mom):



That would be some true love, right there.

I'm also thankful for cameras/pictures.  I love the fact that we can capture moments of our lives on film, so that we can later reflect back and reminisce about those many meaningful moments (such as the one previously mentioned).


Speaking of pictures, here are a few more marvelously memorable moments from my trip for your viewing pleasure:

One of the days we were in Hawaii, we went snorkeling at Ke'e Beach. I was amazed at how many fish I saw- and also how vibrant their colors were. I also saw a sea turtle resting under a rock, which was pretty dang cool. The water was vividly blue. It was gorgeous. No pictures of that, sorry.

Emily and Kennedy did some boogie boarding in the ocean.

Marie watched them from the side lines.

We saw a beaching Monk Seal. It was so cute :)

This beach is at the end of the road, on the northwestern side of Kauai. Right next to the beach is a trail head where you can start the hike to see the Na Pali coast (which is one of the most spectacular sights I've ever witnessed- see this old blog post).  Since we didn't have hiking shoes with us, and the trail was muddy, we decided to just go up a little bit so that we could see the first lookout. We left the kids back at the beach with their grandma (and with the soon-to-be-hungry baby...).

This was our first spectacular view. Um... wow? Yeah. If you look closely, you can see our three little girls playing in the water.

See? ( I was testing my camera's zooming capability. I was impressed.)

Here is the view of the Na Pali coast. Beautiful, eh?



 And this is my sweeter than sweet sister-in-law, Jen  :)

At this point in our hike, baby Aysia was hungry and wanted mommy. So Brandon and Jen ran down the trail as quickly as they could to relieve our mother of the screaming infant... Sorry, mom. :)

Which reminds me- I'm thankful for my mom. This really deserves its own separate blog post, but for now I will just say this: my mom is such a wonderful person.  She is extremely loving, kind, caring, smart, funny, creative, supportive, accepting, generous, beautiful, compassionate, talented, etc... and, above everything else, she still loves me after seeing me perform the aforementioned dance.

10 comments:

Kristin said...

I love watching you and Brandon together. It is one of my favorite things.

Your mom absolutely loves the aforementioned dance, which is why she filmed it. :)

Can we make it an annual or biannual event? Not just the dance, but also the whole trip?

the mom said...

I'm thankful that you are comfortable enough in your own skin to make a complete a** of yourself too :) I can be pretty goofy, but not nearly as comfortable with it as you. Or maybe just not as willing to be photographed in my goofiness :) Perhaps if I had your fit physique I wouldn't be as camera shy....

And I do love how goofy you and Brandon are together.

I'm thankful for all the time we were able to spend together - what a wonderful gift for all of us.

And I'm thankful for you too, wonderful sunshine of my life.

Brandon said...

So fun to do the dance with you. Thanks for posting all the great pictures. Such fun memories to remember.
@Kristin - It would definitely be fun to get together every year, and Hawaii is a great spot for it.

Michelle said...

Those things your said about your mom are all true! She and I had too many "goofy dance" moments to even count. There is no one I can be more silly with than my Allicat.

Loved all your pictures, esp the dance. Who knew Brandon had so many groove moves.

Ashley Rae said...

@Kristin- yes! We most definitely need to make it a regularly event. I had so much fun with all of you!

@Mom- I've seen the goofy from you, before...you just need to learn to do it in public :)

@Brandon- I am so happy that we can be such idiots together. lol. I love you.

@Michelle- do you happen to have pictures of said goofy dances? :D

Raising Helm said...

Love the dance-I will practice so in the near future I can participate with you. You crack me up! love the pics!

Michelle said...

Your mom might have pictures of us in costume when we performed "dance of the fleas" for a ward talent show. I'm not sure if there are any of us performing our spaghetti dance?

the mom said...

Sadly there are no photos of us in our fabulous flea costumes. That was the most brilliant dance ever. Especially since we got the very shy and staid Analise to join us in it. I really wish we had video of that.

No spaghetti food dance photos either... but I do have a few of us when we dressed up in July and went Christmas caroling to the neighbors...

Michelle said...

Good word "staid" lol...Analise

Jennifer said...

I love reading your blog, Ashley. I'm sure I've mentioned that before, but there it is again. :) Fun hike to the lookout. I just feel bad for poor Aysia and Grandma having such a difficult time without the Mommy milk while we were gone.