Christmas Time

Day 200

In December we hung out with our cousins at this festival of the trees. It was really fun. There was this auditorium full of Christmas trees decorated with themes. There were quite a few dedicated to our solders and police force. There was a Narnia tree, Angry Birds tree, Super Mario tree, an UP tress, and my favorite.....

the Tangled tree! I think what made me love this one was that they incorporated the lanterns into the design. After we viewed all the trees we voted which was our favorite.

Group Shot

Afterwards we headed over to enjoy all the fun activities.
They decorated cookies, made crafts, and learned how to apply a cast to their fingers.

Then they got to talk to Santa. It was a very serious matter for this boy because he forgot to add something to his letter and he wanted to make sure and tell Santa.

Day 201

Jumping his bike.

Day 202

Figuring out cups, pints, quarts, and gallons.

Day 203

We had a pleasant surprise at Barnes & Noble. We were in the kids section looking at books one moment and the next there was music playing and these girls started to dancing. It was really neat.

Day 204

 He was going to a Nerf party and need a new gun. Too many decisions for him.

Day 205

It think it is neat that I started this 365 project and even thought I have not finished it, my year culminated with me photographing a company Christmas party and a wedding. I will show you the Christmas party pics now and the wedding pics in another post.

 My sister and I were asked to photograph a company's Christmas party.

This picture makes me smile.

Everything was going well and then someone came up to me. 

Our conversation went something like this:

So you are the photographer.

Me: Yes, I am.

How do you feel about the whole group photo happening in about an hour?

Me: I am sure it will go well.

So you are not afraid of heights?

Me: Excuse me. ( alittle alarmed)

Yeah, I heard that the photographer was going to get in the boom and we are going to raise it up so you could get everybody in the shot. So are you afraid of heights?

Me: DEATHLY afraid of heights!!

The guy just looked at me a little cross-eyed and walked away. 

I'm sure he wasn't really crossed-eyed, maybe it was just  my stomach doing funny things and made it look like he was cross-eyed. Either way, I went to my contact and asked her a few questions. She then confirmed the rumor and asked if I felt comfortable taking the picture in the boom.

Any logical person would have bet I would have said a resounding NO!, but I didn't.  I have this weird thing were, even though I am afraid, I still have to try it. Weird, I know.

So the time came and luckily I had my sister to keep me from making a fool of myself. I seriously thought I was going to cry like a baby, so I just shut my eyes while we ascended. Then it stopped and it swayed. I barked at my sister something to the effect about stop jiggling the boom.

Then I slowly opened my eyes and totally freaked out. Yep, we were high. So I gave myself some time to gather myself. Once I was able to look down and focus on the crowd, my sister and I realized everyone was too scattered. So luckily one of us had a phone and called our other sister down on the ground ( i have alot of sisters :) and she corralled everyone to one place for us. At first I put my camera on auto, pointed it somewhere and fired away. Then I started to get crazy and paid attention to where I was pointing the camera. Once we felt we had enough pictures, they started lowering us. At that point I was at ease and taking pictures of the whole site.
It was quite the experience.

I don't think I will ever forget the first day I was in a boom.