Photography Fun

AcTo be precise, its fun with Ellie's digital camera which Santa brought her for Christmas.

She was so happy to have a camera of her own.  

 While on our trip to Santa Barbara and Chicagoland she took photos of very important things.

Like the family eating dinner...

 And the baby carriage...

 Butterflies...

 And even the car ride...

In Chicagoland we started taking photos of family.

Like Ellie's cousin William...

 Grandpa Harrer...

 and Grandma Harrer...

Once we were back in Boston, Ellie was very excited to take her camera to school for show and tell where she took a picture of friends...

 One of her teachers...

 And let a friend take her picture...

 After only a few days of playing with the camera, we learned about all the special effects you can do with it.

Like add borders to photos...

And funny accessories to your photo subjects...

 Make yourself a real princess...

 And make Daddy look silly!!

 Or you can make multiples of the best smile ever...

Holiday Travels

I know this is a little delayed...but I feel as if we just recovered from our travels.

Despite three planes, three timezones, three states and three separate Christmas celebrations in seven days...our holiday travels were relatively relaxing. There were some big moments, like when Ellie met her new cousin Tristan for the first time and gave him hugs and kisses. But mostly, we were able to see lots of relatives and friends in a short period of time. Isn't that what the holidays are about?

In Santa Barbara we went climbing on dolphins...

 Hunting for turtles...

 Ellie became a princess when she found a tiara in Aunt Susie's room...

Ellie with Great-Grandma Dolly

 Ellie shared her new toys with her great-grandparents...

Ellie with Great-Grandma Van

 We had a traditional SB holiday feast of Santa Maria BBQ (tri-tip, baked beans, and garlic bread)...

 We went jumping for oranges in Great-Grandma Dolly's backyard...

 And searched the trees for thousands of Monarch butterflies...

Ellie became the best hugger ever...

Ellie hugging Great-Grandpa Van

 And the best cuddler...

Ellie learned to pose for family portraits and look at the camera...

With great-grandparentals Van

 Even without mommy and daddy in the photos...



With Grandma Pam and Grandpa Pam or Papa or Grandpa Mike

I appologize for the lack of photos from Chicago. It seems that we forgot to take our camera everywhere. Or have it at the ready. However, this photo pretty much sums up that we had a great time, relaxing nd hanging out with family and friends.

Coloring with Grandma and Grandpa Harrer

Ellie is an expert traveller now and although she didn't sleep on any of the flights (including the one where we landed in CA at 10pm pacific time which was 1am her time) she was terrific on all the flights. And she has a sense of geography now. She understands we can walk to school, have to drive to Aunt Susie's and have to take a plane to see the grandparents because they live, "very very far away". Although our trip seemed short and our visit brief...every moment was quality time.

Primary Focus

Last night I accompanied a couple reporters (along with my fellow producer and good friend Leo) up to Manchester, NH for the New Hampshire Primary. The results were a foregone conclusion, so excitement and anticipation levels were low, but it was still sort of fun being in the thick of things. Leo and I were assigned to field produce (round up interview subjects, communicate with producers and executive producers back at the station) for a couple reporters covering the Romney campaign. It wasn't too tough to do either because a lot of big names were just milling about in Romney HQ. Here are a few shots from the night.


Room full of Mitt-backers.. pre-victory speech.


NBC News' Peter Alexander (who can be seen on "Today" and "NBC Nightly News)


Former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld (who once famously dove into the Charles River wearing a full suit to "proove" it's "safe" to swim in)


Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty (yippee.. Tim Pawlenty, the guy who dropped out of the Presidential race on the GOP side well before anything actually got started)


CNN's Candy Crowley (who was a big jokester.. always laughing with her crew and the other reporters in the room)


Fox News' Carl Cameron (who texts more than a 13-year-old girl) -------------------------- Polls closed at 8 pm.. with networks already calling the race for Romney at 7:50 pm.. based purely on exit polls. Turns out this time they were right. Mitt came out to do his thing, flanked by his wife and five sons, around 8:25.











After that.. the room cleared out pretty quickly. No after party. No bar (open or otherwise as you usually see in most other campaign HQ's). Mormons aren't the drinking type, as you know, and apparently not the interesting type, either.





Most of the reporters just chilled in that empty room, putting together their reports on the press risers, through the 11 pm news (newses?) they were reporting for.





That's one of our guys, Dan Hausle, in the gray suit. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone