When Santa Comes To Town
When you live in Pennsylvania, 9 times out of 10 you will wind up living in some type of Community. While not all communities are the same, some do go above and beyond to bring great events to their residents. Hemlock Farms is one of them. Located just off of Route 84 in Hawley, Hemlock Farms is a well established community with its own post office and fire department. Each year, the fire department goes around to designated houses with Santa and visits with the children. Santa even has a sack full of presents for the kids!
This year, we were invited to attend a holiday party at one of the homes while everyone waited for Santa to arrive. A few of the family’s friends joined in on the fun with their children as well! Santa (like the cable guy) gave everyone a 3-hour window in which he would arrive. To help pass the time, the children had all kinds of games to play and food to eat! During the wait, Loretta and I snapped off some shots of the children as they made Reindeer food, colored holiday books, decorated ornaments and played Pin The Buttons On The Snowman!
Here are a couple of the shots we liked:
After waiting the full three hours, Santa still hadn’t arrived. We later found out that the fire department had a fire call which diverted Santa’s route for a little while!
*Out of respect for the other parents who attended, we decided not to show their children. The children shown are friends of the family who have previously given us permission to do so.
Camera Friendly Cats
They’ve always said that children and animals are two of the hardest subjects to photograph. I beg to differ!
I have three cats at home and they all love to be in front of the camera. Every time I take it out, they seem to find the cutest poses and will stay like that until I get up and walk away after taking a couple shots of them. We’ll often do shoots here and they’ll make the decision to join in as if we accidentally left them out!
This morning, our one cat Madeline decided to get into one of those cute poses … so I couldnt resist!
A Fire In The Winter Sky
When I travel around off-assignment, I tend to bring my camera with me anyways as I never know what I will see. This habit proved to be a good thing!
While driving home through Sussex NJ, I saw the wintery sky begin to quickly change colors as the sun started to set. After finishing my last errand, I drove around the area to see if I could find a nice little spot to get a shot or two off. As I drove down one of the back roads, the quick-thinking side of my brain told me to go straight instead of making a right-hand turn. Good thing I finally listened!
As I came over the crest of the hill, this shot nearly fell in my lap!
Cookies With Mrs. Claus
Yesterday, we were up at the Eldred Preserve in Eldred, NY for a holiday event called Cookies With Mrs. Claus. Each of the kids who attended the event received a plate of a dozen or so cookies that they could decorate any which way they chose. They also had story time, pictures with Mrs. Claus and a surprise visit by the big guy himself …
A Surprise Well Worth The Secrets
Over the last nine months or so, our family (and friends of our family) had been keeping a big secret. This was the “over the hill” year for my mother and my father wanted to do something that she wouldn’t soon forget.
When the idea of a surprise party was quickly shot down, my father decided to think bigger (and inherently more complicated). Bigger … in the way of a cruise ship big …
So for the last nine months, we have all lied and snuck around, getting our passports, packing clothes and making all of the last minute arrangements for something we hoped would go off without a hitch!
Finally, D-Day had arrived and little did my mother know, we all stayed in the same hotel as my parents the night before boarding the ship. The finally boarded and we followed about two hours behind them. With a couple sneaky calls, we secretly found my parents and decided to surprise my mom … not once … but twice. We sent out the friends of the family and she was excited to see them onboard. As she was still in a bit of amazement, we struck again …
Needless to say, all of the secrets we kept and the lies we told over the last nine months were well worth the reaction we got:
Later on that night (sometime around dinner), we think the reality finally started to set in! Over the next week, we enjoyed incredible food, service and excursions that let us see things like never before! Here are just a few of the shots we took during our week long vacation on the high seas!
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This floating city (the ship) was so big that no matter where I stood here in Key West, I couldn’t get the entire ship in the view finder at once! Wish I had a wide angle and my DSLR!
As far south in the continental US as we could go!
The four of us with two of the best tour guides in Cozumel!
All of us with the guys that made each night an absolute pleasure!