A few weeks ago Courtney and I took a weekend trip to Santa Barbara for my best friend, Jason’s wedding. Some impromptu wine tasting the next day with our friends Matt and Marissa was a perfect way to end the weekend.

Jason and Tiff were married in a totally cool Spanish style church with stained glass and exposed wood beams. Jason’s step-father officiated the ceremony and Jason’s brother Justin sang for everyone. I was Jason’s best man, and I can’t say that I didn’t tear up as I watched my friend of 14 years join together with someone that makes him so completely happy. It was a perfect night and Courtney and I couldn’t be happier for the two of them!  Tiffany even told me she liked the Best Man speech… which was a relief, I thought I’d get yelled at for that one!

Sunday was awesome with wine tasting. I had never been before so it was a new experience and something I’ll want to do again. Spending the day wine tasting had always been on the “oh I can do it later because I live close enough” list. So glad I finally went. It was a super fun way to spend the day – driving through the Sana Ynez valley, stopping at small wineries laughing, drinking of course, but mostly a relaxing day with friends.  Matt & Marissa are seriously like wine pro’s.  I’m pretty sure they were “members” of each winery we went to.  Im officially up for a trip back to Santa Barbara for more wine tasting, so if anyone needs a wine tasting buddy…. Im your designated drinker.

Here are a few shots Court snuck during the wedding, and a few more from wine tasting the next day.

Cheers!

Matt

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yeah… SO Im pretty much addicted to Instagram, which means I take a ton of Instagrams of my HOT wife, some awesome beer’s and some awesome restaurants… and our cat Violet every now and then… Here’s my 2011 in 120 seconds….

NYE Resolution… to blog more… Ok, so seriously, Im terrible at writing… I’ve always been, in whatever grade you’re supposed to do creative writing… I hated it… Really? You want me to write creatively? Can I write un-creatively and still get credit for creative writing? I mean… that’s creative write? err… Right?  Anyhow, I do throughly enjoy the thought of one day sitting down and looking back upon this blog and laughing at some stories of myself… I also “hate” talking, ask my wife… its like pulling teeth to get me to say anything beyond “fine” when she asks me what I did all day… so maybe… if I can write a few things down I can just read my thoughts to her… or maybe she could read them? Sadly no such luck… Im going to go learn how to expand on words besides “fine”.

Ok, so my mom had this awesome idea for our family to go out to Mission Inn for dinner and to view the Christmas Lights this past December… at first, I was kinda jaded… Ok… mom… here we go… another exciting family outing… but really… I love my family like crazy, and as our family grows we all get to hang out less and less, so now even more so… these moment’s are super fun and worth it… Here’s the awesome time we had at Mission Inn.

I recently had the opportunity to shoot a Lifestyle Session for Jamie Periko from Newport Beach, CA.  Wanting a beach styled shoot, we choose a lifestyle shoot at The Montage in Laguna Beach early one morning, the weather was amazing and the sun was fantastic!!  I was beyond surprised for a November morning, the water was quite warm.  The Lovely Kimberly Cole provided make up and hair styling.

Wow… I’m sitting here in my hotel room about 32 hours after the 8.9 Earthquake in Japan… Im still here on pins & needles, as I write this we just had a 4.0 aftershock. It goes without saying that my experience here in Maihama at the Tokyo Disneyland Resort is SO insignificant in comparison to what has happened to the Japanese not only here in Tokyo, but in Sedoni & Northern Japan.

I was on the 4th floor of the CNS building at Tokyo Disney Sea. I was starting to work on video for the new nighttime spectacular Fantasmic! At about 2:45pm I began to feel a low rumbling, now Ive lived and been in earthquakes in Southern California and just thought to myself, hold on, Itll be over soon. However, it kept going, and kept getting stronger, and stronger. I then moved over and stood under the doorway of the room I was in, the earthquake kept going. There were soon violent shakes and two computer monitors fell off local workstations, followed by equipment falling off of shelves.

I was now scared, the violent shocks soon subsided and the rumbling continued. I made my way down to the 3rd floor where our Creative Entertainment offices are and met up with the rest of the team, after about 5 min the earthquake stopped. The Legend of Mythica, which is the daytime show was about halfway through its performance, the show was canceled and we watched all the barges high tail it back into the Marina. Soon announcements began in Japanese, our interpreters quickly translated for us, that we were all to evacuate the building, we went outside where the OLC Management team quickly relayed us information about what had happened. Soon there were more aftershocks, and they would go on and on and on. We all stayed in a meeting room that was located on the first floor.

Soon we were allowed to head upstairs to grab our belongings, as we began to head up, another aftershock hit, I quickly grabbed my things and headed back outside. I was met by several parade performers in the stairwell who were scared and crying as the building continued to shake. It was right out of a Armageddon movie… lots of yelling & screaming… I continued to head down the stairs and would point down as I ran into performers who were just stuck in the stairwell in fear.

Once back in the meeting room we all started to hear news of the tragic events as they unfolded in Northern Japan. We watched footage of the Tsunami unfold before our eyes, in complete shock. Thanks to facebook and twitter I was able to stay in touch with family back home and get in touch with Jason Badger another member of our team who was still at the hotel and never made it into work.

We were finally allowed to head back to the hotel, where we all convened in the bar and had beverages to calm our nerves and eat dinner. Aftershocks continued to occur throughout the night.

This morning we all woke up and headed out to lunch… here’s where everything really sets in… The 69,000 people who were at Disney the day before were still stranded, there were several thousand at our hotel waiting for a bus, there were several more thousand queued up at the local train station waiting for buses. I grabbed my camera and snapped some pics. I was in absolute amazement of the calmness and level of organization of the Japanese people. These people had been stranded overnight, yet calmly waited in line for a bus. There was no yelling, crying, mayhem, nothing… they waited patiently inline to get home.

I sit here in complete awe of how lucky and fortunate myself and my fellow colleagues are, we are all safe and sound here at the Tokyo Bay Hilton, we have had hot food for each meal, and we have a solid roof over our head. Im definitely praying for our continued safety and for those in Northern Japan who aren’t as lucky as I…

Stranded tourists outside our hotel waiting to get home… A sign in Japanese saying what I can only guess is that the shop is closed.A staircase separated a good 6-8 inches….Convenience Store shelves have sold out of goods as people eat make shift meals as they are stranded by lack of train & bus service. A sign at our hotel telling guests that Tokyo Disneyland & Tokyo Disney Sea will be closed all day.  Later this evening a sign was up saying that the parks will be closed through Mon March 21st.

Allrighty…. Testing out the new wordpress publishing features from my phone…. This could be dangerous…. Or really dang cool!!

Today Bobby chartered a speed boat for our group and we headed out to explore the Phi Phi Islands. The Phi Phi Islands were the main site in the film “The Beach” they were also destroyed during the 2004 Tsunami, however all the infrastructure and tourist areas have been mostly rebuilt.

We started off at 6am in the morning and got to the marina about 7… we set off and reached the first island and beach at about 8. The water was crystal clear, so we spent some time in the water snorkeling. Had an ABSOLUTE blast… I used my GoPro camera to catch some video, as soon as I figure out how to get it uploaded.. you’ll be seeing it…

We continued our tour, including lunch at a Thai cafe… and a trip to the Islands wouldn’t be complete without a visit with the Monkeys…

Another Fun filled day out here on the Raddest Photo Trip Ever!!!

Here’s some pics of our day!

Yesterday we left Kanchanaburi, Thailand and traveled to Phuket. We took a 1.5hr flight, think John Wayne to San Fran…

The beaches and water are just STUNNING. Clear blue water, perfect temperature… Couldn’t have been a better way to cap our trip… We’ll be here for the next couple days, so we have some killer stuff planned, a visit to a snake farm, the Phi Phi Islands & visiting a secluded beach, Freedom Beach.

Here’s a quick couple pics. Courtney teaching Bobby yoga, a great pic of Kim & Josh at sunset, and a killer sunset!

Yesterday after bathing elephants in the river we went to visit Tiger Temple. Tiger Temple is a Temple run by Monks who’s goal is to preserve tigers in a natural habitat. I’ve always thought Tigers are an AWESOME species of animal. My Grandfather would volunteer at the Cincinnati Zoo where they have a White TIger Conservation program, he would tell us stories of the tigers and being on “baby watch”.

We were fortunate enough to visit with the tigers while they were sleeping during the day since they are nocturnal animals. In the afternoon we were able to stay and watch them play and exercise before they were led back to the free roaming area of the temple where they stay at night and run around on several acres. We learned that they are 87 tigers currently at Tiger Temple and about 12 a day interact with guests, and all the Tigers rotate though the interaction… So they only spend about 8 hours with people during there week….

Here’s some pictures from our day…

Today we got to experience bathing elephants in the river… such magnificent animals!!!