November 22, 2010

Winter wonderland

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One of the perks of living in a small town with other small towns near us is all the fun holiday festivities.  A town near us just spent a lot of money to uncover a creek that was running under the streets and building in their downtown area.  The area was in desperate need of a revitalization project and the city hoped by uncovering the creek and creating a park like area it would bring people into the area and the businesses would benefit. They have several festivals through out the year and for the last few years they have created a Winter Wonderland area with thousands of lights and holiday decorations.

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The lights were just turned on Friday night, so Saturday night we headed over for some family fun.  We didn’t tell the kids were we were going, we just told them to dress warm.  As you can see even Mark didn’t follow his own instructions.  He is really in shorts.  We have lived in Idaho for 12 years and he still wears shorts in the winter. I guess you can take the man out of Vegas, but you can never take the Vegas out of the Man.

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The area follows the creek and has a few foot bridges that cross the creek. All the trees are wrapped in lights and the bridges are covered in lights.

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I took this opportunity to mess with the shutter speed on the camera and tried to get pictures without a flash.  With some trial and error I think I did well.

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Some of the pictures I just used the Auto feature so I could see the kids.  There were several of these lighted bears playing all over the area.

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The reflection of the lights in the water is so pretty.  Luckily the bridge on this end had a large hand rail and I was able to slow the shutter speed while the camera was steady on the hand rail.  I just added camera tripod to my Christmas wish list.

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I forgot to speed up the shutter speed, but thought this picture was pretty in it’s own way.

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Over by their old train depot they had Winnie the Pooh train. Allyson was piglet one year for Halloween. Hello old friend!

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Happy Holidays Piglet.

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Ballerina Ashley liked the candy cane walkway.  I guess ballet classes are paying off, this seems to be her standard pose lately.

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