Southern California Wedding Photographer - John Riedy

You only turn six once, they say, and Cole Riedy decided to make the most of it. We started with a family celebration at his FAVORITE Halloween restaurant in La Jolla… Barbarella (ooh, scary!). This restaurant decorates each Halloween season with at least 500 different decorations. You’ve never seen anything quite like it. We then spread the celebration out over several days culminating in the coup de grace GODZILLA party at our home (thank GOD we’ve moved on from the Dora, Thomas, Wiggles, Barney, etc. phase!).

I have to say, Becky Riedy went to TOWN on this one. There were no bouncy houses, no face painters, no magicians… nothing but good homegrown fun. The smartest thing she did was to hire three of our neighborhood teenage girls to help run the various activities (and, oh baby, were there activities!). We started with general pandemonium. You’ve gotta let them burn off a little steam before trying to corral them. Next was bobbing for apples. Cole was first and went after it like the Zilla going after Biollante, Destroyah, MechaGodzilla, and King Ghidorah… all at once! Jack, on the other hand, took a slightly less aggressive (and drier) approach. Cheeky monkey! Once they had procured their apples from the tub, it was on to the Candy Apple Decoration Station. Oh, did this part get MESSY! Next, they all decorated their very own party bags.  After that was “Pin the Tail on Godzilla”.   Cole was first and NAILED it!

The CAKE… OMG, the cake.  This thing was a labor of love and a work of art.  You HAVE to look at it below.  Becky made the most amazing Godzilla cake.  It’s Godzilla’s foot stomping on a road, cars, trees, people, etc.  Classic.  The interior was red velvet cake, so it was delicious as it was bloody looking.  Yummmmmm.  I swear Becky could go into business doing this.  She worked SOOO hard on Cole’s party, I can’t even describe it.

After the cake we had a cake walk, only instead of giving the kids cakes, they got to pick out a book.  How freakin’ cool is that???  They LOVED it.  Last, we had an egg hunt.  No, not some namby pamby Easter egg hunt.  These were GODZILLA EGGS!!!  Becky actually made (with a little help from yours truly) Godzilla eggs out of paper mache wrapped balloons and filled them with a bit of candy and then spray painted them green.  The kids had SOOOO much fun tearing into these.  It was kind of hard to watch when you knew that those took about 8 hours to make.  Ugh.  All in all it was a fantastic party.  I hope I keep this blog going so that Cole can look back on it someday and remember how much fun it was.  Enjoy the photos…

Congregation Beth El
The Hotel Del Coronado
August 23, 2008

 

What an amazingly cool right of passage… becoming a man. Young Bradley Tauber did his parents proud on Saturday when he did just that. Let’s face it, 13 years old is an awkward age for anyone, but Brad was just about as bright, poised, respectful, and positive as any young man I’ve ever known. As a father of two, I can only hope that my boys turn out as well. Of course, when you meet his parents, Laura and Brian, why Brad is the way he is, becomes immediately apparent. The Taubers are just a very, very cool family. Brad’s younger brother, Lou, and sister, Leah, are also both super cool kids and I REALLY hope to one day have the honor of photographing their Bar and Bat-mitzvahs respectively.

Now, you may have been to a Mitzvah before, but I doubt it was anything like this one. The term, “over-the-top”, comes to mind (but in a good way). After the service at Congregation Beth El in La Jolla, the festivities took place at the Hotel Del Coronado. All told, about 70 kids swarmed the beach. Between, boogie boarding, beach volleyball, water balloons, tug o’ war, colored sand filled glass thingies, and much more, the only superfluous detail that day was the beach chairs. There was WAY too much to do for anyone to sit. Next, while Brad and the kids were hosed down (it would take a fire hose to get all the sand off of them), the adults arrived on the Windsor lawn for a cocktail hour replete with steel drums, a full sushi bar and a hands on reptile/giant cockroach show for the little ones. Then it was on to the fabulous Crown Room, aka “Camp Tauber” for the party. And what a party it was…