People

Henry

Our friends, Andy and Greta had the youth from church over for a Super Bowl party this evening. Although I’m not a youth, I was allowed to come because, well, just because, I suppose. I took quite a few pictures of everyone but none of the group pictures really conveys “watching football” and since this is such a cute picture, this will have to do.

Henry has been featured on this little blog thing before, in a post titled Another Henry on December 09, 2012. Let’s be frank, there are a lot of cute kids out there. There may be kids about who are as cute as Henry but you’d be hard pressed to find any cuter.

Cathy and Jean

The Music Guild at WCA had a coffeehouse this evening, postponed from last Friday when the snow caused the cancellation of evening activities. I took a few photographs at the coffeehouse, or more precisely before the coffeehouse. During the performances I switched over to video and recorded most of them. After it was over, we went to IHOP with some of our friends, including Jean and her daughter, Maria. So, here we have two of my favorite women in the world. Cathy and Jean.

Kendra

Dorothy’s friend, Kendra, came over today and they basically hung out. In the afternoon we made them go for a walk with us in the neighborhood. Naturally I brought my camera and, also naturally, Kendra brought hers. She often mugs for the camera but for this picture she actually gave me a very natural smile, which I really appreciate.

I took some other pictures on our walk that I like well enough. I decided not to post them, though, because I decided I’m much more likely to take similar photos in the future. I’ve done this before. I take two or three pictures that I like and I want to pick one of them for the day’s picture. I usually choose the one that I’m least likely to reproduce again and post that. Of course, if I like a different one significantly more, then I’ll post that one. This only applies when a few are at about the same level of likedness.

Dorothy and Riley

Dorothy loves to visit her friend Julia and I can’t say I blame her. The whole family is just fun to be with. On this occasion, they had an extra dog staying with them and today’s picture is of Dorothy and Riley.

Dorothy, Julia, and Maureen

Yesterday I completed my second year of taking a photo a day. This web site contains that second year. My first year was on Facebook and I’ve been meaning to add them here as well. As I start my third year of living photographically (not that I didn’t take pictures before that) I want to take a moment to thank all the friends (and a few strangers) who let me take their photograph. In particular, Dorothy has been very patient with her old dad and her friends have likewise been very good to me. Here we have two of our favorite friends, Julia and her mom, Maureen, with whom Dorothy spent the day.

12:59:59 12/31/2012

The clock in my camera was about a minute and a quarter off from the clock on the television (which was also off when compared to my phone, so it may have been wrong). In any case, as measured by whatever network we were watching, this it the last photo of 2012, taken at 11:59:59. It is, not too surprisingly, very similar to the final photograph I took last year, standing virtually in the same spot and with many of the same people. Thanks to all for making it a memorable year and for putting up with my camera in your face so many times. I’m looking forward to the year ahead.

I also passed a milestone this week, passing the 50,000 mark on my two year old camera. This picture is number 50,132 on my camera. That means I took 22,633 in 2012, down a bit from the 27,263 that I took in 2011.

Karlee and Dorothy

I had a pretty quiet day today. Cathy went to work. Dorothy and her cousins took their grandma out to lunch and then went to see the new Les Miserables movie. In the evening I picked her up and we picked up Dorothy’s friend, Karlee and the four of us (Cathy was home from work) went to a little Thai hole in the wall that we really like.

I know this isn’t a great picture but it’s the best of the few I took.

Christmas, 2012

We had our traditional three-fold Christmas today, starting with our simple Christmas at home with just the three of us. We moved up from that to our favorite breakfast of the year at Cathy’s mom’s house. Pancakes, eggs, bacon and sausage along with orange juice and freshly brewed hazelnut coffee. It doesn’t get much better than that.

We went from there to my mom’s where we had our traditional, if somewhat unorthodox enchilada dinner, with plenty of extras. We played our also traditional gift swap game and generally had a good time. We hadn’t taken a picture at Thanksgiving but we did today, which turned out nicely, I think.

Candle Light Service

Candle Light Service

One of my favorite times of the year is our annual Christmas Eve service. I enjoy the singing, although I try to sit far enough from other so they aren’t bothered by whatever key I happen to sing in. “They asked me to sing tenor… twelve miles away.”

My favorite part of this favorite evening is the candle light song at the end, with the lights down low and everyone holding a lit candle, as we sing (which I guess is what a “candle light song” implies). I took a few pictures, but don’t worry, I was still singing as I did it (although I wasn’t holding a lit candle).

These are my two favorite pictures from the evening. The first has Trish and Ben (although you can only see the top of his head) and some of their family. The second is of two sisters, Sasha and Stasia. Beautiful people, all.

Rainbow

Somewhere, under the rainbow, are the friends we went with to Brookside Gardens’ “Garden of Lights” this evening. We can never see enough of Mike and Krystal and it was wonderful to see Sue, Tom and their three children, Daniel, Matthew, and Alyssa again after so long. My how they have grown (the children, Tom and Sue are pretty much unchanged). We were also happy to get to know Mike’s mom a little bit. What a joyful person she is. Thank you so much for including us in the party.

I took a lot of pictures, as you would probably expect, most of which were intentionally blurry. In general I find pictures of Christmas lights to be rather boring, even when they are pretty in real life. This picture was a bit tricky because I wanted to balance the flash lighting the people with the lights making up the rainbow. It turned out just about right.

After we left the garden we want back to Mike and Krystal’s for pizza and a fun time of chatting, laughing, and basically having a good time.

Live Nativity

We had a great time this evening at our friends’ annual living nativity party. We gathered in their barn, which was chilly but at least out of the wind, had a pot luck dinner, and went through the Christmas story. As the various characters were mentioned in the story, anyone dressed for the part went to the front, adding to the pageantry. Christmas carols appropriate for each portion of the story were sung so everyone was involved, dressed for the part or simply watching. In this picture, there are four Marys, which isn’t strictly speaking accurate (that is, there was only one in the true story) but it was fun for the girls involved. There is also a pig and a monkey in the stable with them, which my not be completely accurate, either. No matter.

After the Nativity story was finished, we went into the warm house for cookies, a visit from Santa, and a chance to catch up with friends.

Preston

We had the X-Factor Christmas Party this evening and I took quite a few pictures. There are a lot of good pictures to choose from. Actually, I’ve been meaning to post another bunch of pictures of people onto Facebook but frankly, there are way too many to do that. I pulled out people pictures from August through November and realized I was going to have to throw out a lot of good pictures to cut down the pictures from nearly 1,900 pictures to few enough for a Facebook gallery.

Anyway, of the pictures I took tonight, we liked this picture of Preston the best. He’s always been quite photogenic and with good looking parents, he definitely won the genetics lottery. Now, he has gotten old enough that he actually sits still for long enough that I can get his picture. Here he is modeling the slippers he got in the Yankee Swap gift exchange game. They were subsequently taken from him but he got them back later, so he ended up with them, which made him happy.

D and Donna

Since I have a good picture of him, I thought it would be a good excuse (like I need one) to post a picture of his parents, D and Donna.

In this picture you don’t get the pleasure of seeing Donna’s beautiful smile but that’s life (“that’s what all the people say”). The picture makes me smile. Guys, we love you and are so glad we have you working with our youth.

Hannah and Dorothy

School is out for Christmas break but Cathy and I still had to go to work today. Dorothy was able to spend the day with her friend Hannah. By the evening when I went to pick Dorothy up, I still hadn’t taken any pictures. I asked if I could come in and take a few pictures of them. They were nice enough to let me. Most of the pictures are of them mugging in various ways but this one turned out very well. I’m not sure what Hannah’s hat is in aid of, although it was raining quite hard outside.

Christmas Caroling

Suzy, Fiona, Trish, and Cathy

A few folks from church had an idea for doing a little Christmas caroling this year, took the initiative to get it organized and seem to have started a tradition. Rather than simply walk through a neighborhood singing the plan was to rig up a trailer behind a pick-up truck. The back of the truck would have the drum set and room (just barely, as it turned out) for guitar and base players. At the front of the trailer was a keyboard. The rest of the trailer was set up for the singers, sitting back to back on bales of straw. The whole thing, pick-up truck and trailer, were lined with Christmas lights.

Taking flash pictures of Christmas lights is a bit tricky, particularly when they are moving. The flash is so much brighter than they are that they disappear. The first picture here does a decent job of showing you the lights, although it isn’t a great picture of the carolers. The second is a bit better, showing Suzy, Fiona, Trish, and Cathy. On the right you can see Dave holding a flashlight for Amanda on the keyboard.

Everyone had a fun time and it sounds like something we’ll want to do again next year. Put it on your calendar now and don’t miss it.

Henry

I don’t know a lot of other people named Henry. At times it has been a popular name but there don’t seem to be a lot of people my age with the name. I don’t know if this is enough of a sample to say the name is coming back into fashion, but I photographed two little boys named Henry in as many days. Yesterday there was a couple with two children and the younger of the two was a Henry. Then there is this Henry, who has been coming to our church for a little while (with his parents, of course). This isn’t the best picture I’ve ever taken of him but it’s the best I got today. He’s a wonderfully cute little boy. It helps to win the genetic lottery and have attractive parents.

???, Elizabeth, and Elsie

Elizabeth

After the dreary morning yesterday, I was a little afraid that today would be a washout. Instead I woke to a beautiful day and it only got better as the day went on. I spent much of the day at a craft sale at Rocklands Farm, offering my cards and prints to whoever was interested. I’m sure the gorgeous weather played a part in making it a pretty successful day. Not only that but I got to see friends whom I see far too infrequently. Finally, there were a host of cute kids there and for the most part they were happy to pose for pictures.

In the first picture, I’m not sure of the name of the girl on the left but the other two are Elizabeth and Elsie. I’m fortunate enough to know their parents and I’ve photographed both of them before. The three girls were using some of Janis’ wreath making supplies to make themselves a bit more more festive.

The second picture is another of Elizabeth, modelling a hat. I was impressed with the pot holders that Elizabeth had made for the craft sale. She stood with her wares and happily pocketed the money earned. What an adorable girl she is.

Katie and Ilene

We had our group holiday lunch/party/thing this afternoon and I took a few pictures. It’s a little weird. Some places I go, people are not used to seeing me without my camera. Other places, they are not surprised when they see me taking pictures, although I don’t always have it in front of my face. Work, however, is the other way ’round. I do go outside at lunchtime some days to take pictures and a few people are used to seeing that. On occasion friends and co-workers will have their children at work and I often get to take pictures of them (the children). But it’s pretty rare for me to be snapping pictures of my co-workers themselves. This is the second year the small group I work in has gone to the party with this larger group at work and I only really know a small fraction of them, which adds to the weirdness, I suppose.

That’s a long-winded way of saying, this is a picture of two of my co-workers, taken at our holiday party/lunch/thing — Katie on the left, Ilene on the right.

Hannah

It would have been better if we had a bit more room but this evening Dorothy’s good friend Hannah was doing one-hand cartwheels and I took a few pictures. I think this is the best of them because it looks as though she is standing still on one hand. She’s actually moving from right to left in this picture.