Staff Appreciation Lunch at Tappan Hill School

This morning I spent time with some wonderful women - moms in our school district, to help serve our Pre K and Kindergarten teachers a special Staff Appreciation Lunch. Kelley and Virginia worked so hard to plan the event, it was wonderful to be part of a great team. The staff at Tappan Hill are AMAZING and a delicious lunch provided by many kind and generous parents was very greatly appreciated by them.

My very talented friend, Debbie, of Love Lane Bakery fame made incredible cupcakes. Check out her Etsy store for the personalized decals she creates to decorate the cakes:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/debdp

Not only did they look fantastic, they tasted amazing too.

Thank you so much Deb.

Beautiful Nyack Family | Tarrytown Family Photographer | Debbie Allan Photography

Last weekend I had the absolute pleasure of meeting the Most Family. They live in the picturesque town of Upper Nyack, just across the Hudson from Tarrytown. Being so close I am not sure why I do not spend more time there. It is gorgeous.

We spent most of the session on the bank of the Hudson at Hook Mountain Beach. What a stunning little spot. It was easy to forget that we were by the river and not on a little deserted island in a faraway land (until we caught sight of the Tappan Zee Bridge!) The children had a great time climbing on, over and under the large pieces of driftwood that decorated the shoreline.

Little Lena kept me very entertained. She has a lot to say for a two year old, such a wonderful personality. Big brother and sister were fabulous to work with. I could have spent the whole day with them. They were very patient, calm and incredibly polite young children. A credit to their parents.

Here are just a few of my favorites from the morning.

Memorial Weekend

What a busy, family filled Memorial Weekend. All over too quickly, but enjoyable whilst it lasted!

I always look forward to this weekend as it means the unofficial start to summer and the pool opening! We headed there for opening morning. The water was a "cooooool" 68 degrees, which certainly is not warm enough for me! The boys (all three of them)immersed themselves for a brief moment or two. It was great to be back at the Crest to see all of those neighbors and friends whose paths have not crossed with ours since Labor Day weekend! Out of hibernation we all come to enjoy our communal "backyard" Lets hope it is a summer filled with many, many visits to the pool, for cooling off time, dinner with friends, swim team training, meets and much more. It felt like Labor Day had been just a month or two ago - how time flies.

On Sunday afternoon we headed into Jersey City to meet with MeRa Koh, Brian and the women taking part in the NJ Confidence Workshop. I was SOOOOO excited about having the opportunity to have family photographs taken by this wonderful group. The setting was gorgeous and the weather was ideal. It was amazing to meet MeRa, although it was a shame I did not have more time to talk to her and learn from her a little. Hoping that I get a chance to attend one of her workshops, maybe as soon as this Fall. Fingers crossed.

Our family were placed with the "Canon Ladies" a wonderful group of women, who seems to be having a blast of a weekend and learning so much along the way. Cameron and Campbell were superstars. They knew just how much this meant to me and were troupers, following direction from the group for more than an hour and then when it was over said "is it over already?" They had a great time, as did Craig and I.

Cameron later said to me that he was so happy we got the Canon group, although he would have been ok with Nikon or Sony if they gave him a free camera! LOVE IT!

I have been fortunate enough to make contact via Facebook with several of the attendees and so have seen quite a few sneak peeks of their amazing work. I LOVE FB!!

This was the first image I got to see. Being very self critical I was amazed to actually LOVE a photograph of myself. That may be a first! Gretchen you are a very talented photographer.



Natasha (of Pondering Ponteuf fame) and her family were there too and so we all rewarded the children with icecream afterward, which gave me a chance to capture several images. I had been having a hard time not having my camera in hand for several hours!!!













We started Memorial Day off with watching daddy march in the Tarrytown Parade.



WAITING FOR DADDY



We saw many more familiar face and feet! I love this shot of Mrs Lustyik's patriotic socks.



We finished off our holiday weekend at our neighbors pool. The water temperature was perfect - even I got in the water! The boys had a great time mainly involving super soakers. Water melon was on hand as refreshment - summer is around the corner!! Yippee.