• Wow, NJ lawmaker actually introduces a bill good for NJ. I would, however, pay to keep this girl away from NJ for good. http://bit.ly/gnn7pA #
• Sands in Bethlehem is 1 of nicest non-AC/LV casinos I’ve seen. Also good that they try to respect history of Bethlehem Steel. pasands.com #
• Delicious lunch at Emeril’s Burgers & More. First time at one of @Emeril‘s restaurants. Definitely worth the trip! http://bit.ly/eu2A5 #
• Even if I can’t eat them anymore, it’s still sad to see TastyKake (@TastyBakingCo) no longer being a Philly company. http://bit.ly/gGpQFQ #
• I’ve never expected truth in politics, but this guy makes some really good points about blatant lying. http://bit.ly/dNMN5C #

After going to the Bethlehem Chriskindlmarkt, we stopped at Koziar’s Christmas Village. It was the first time I’ve been there since I was a little kid. It’s only grown more impressive over the years. My photos don’t do it justice.

When I think of Christmas it conjures images of small towns with rows of little stores selling gifts in Germany. OK, so maybe not the Germany part. However, a really cool Christmas tradition does come from Germany. It’s the Chriskindlmarkt. Bethlehem, PA (a.k.a. Christmas City) puts on a huge one every year. I finally got a chance to go to it this year. It was a fun day of shopping and some sightseeing.

Then i heard Philadelphia was putting on one of their own at City Hall. It was called the Philadelphia Christmas Village. While not as big it will hopefully be an annual event because it has real potential.

Check out my photos from Bethlehem and then take a look at my photos of Philadelphia.

I finally found time to go on another covered bridge tour. If you haven’t seen my previous photos from the Lehigh Valley, you can check them out here. Then go check out my newest photos from the covered bridges of Berks County. I’m sure they aren’t the last ones you’ll see posted.

The photos also include some pictures of the Reading area including the William Penn Memorial Fire Tower and Pagoda.

A few posts ago I promised a brief review of the restaurant that I went to in Lancaster last weekend. The restaurant was an Amish buffet called The Family Cupboard. You can also order meals, but we went for the buffet. Most buffets are basically a smorgasbord of mediocre food. We were leery that this would be the same. We had picked it out randomly from the Internet.

When we walked in and saw that there was a fair number of Amish/Mennonite folks eating there, we became more confident that the food would be good. As it turns out, it was really good. I went back for three plates plus dessert. There was a delicious meatloaf, buttered noodles that were clearly homemade and definately from a PA Dutch/German recipe. These sat alongside glazed ham, stuffing and seafood, pasta lima beans and on and on. The salad bar was your usual salad bar. I was glad to see it was all fresh and crispy, but what really made it special was a delicious house dressing.

For dessert, there was Turkey Hill ice cream as well as an assortment of desserts, but but what really caught my attention was the pies. I had a piece of pecan pie (my favorite) which wasn’t so great, but I went back for another piece and selected shoo-fly pie. It was delicious!

You can view their menu and get directions at FamilyCupboard.com.

You might remember that I went to a Christmas show at the American Music Theatre in Lancaster, PA at the end of last year. We went back last week to see Jack Hanna and his menagerie of wild animals. The show was fantastic. It was a lot of fun to see him in person after watching him on TV for so many years. Afterwards, we went shopping at the Tanger and Rockvale Outlets.

We had dinner at a fantastic restaurant called The Family Cupboard. I’ll mention some more about that in a future post. Maybe a little review.

The only bad part of the day is that my father couldn’t have been with us. He would have loved the show. He’s the one who taught me most everything I know about animals. Nature shows were his favorite.

The photos can be viewed right here.

After a very difficult few months, I’m finally trying to start getting caught up with things. That includes updating my site. I just posted some photos that I took when we took my grandfather to the annual Christmas show at the American Music Theatre in Lancaster, PA. It was a christmas gift to him from my Mom & Dad.

This particular place holds a special meaning to him and me because the threatre is on the property where there once existed The Willows Motel that he and my grandmother used to take me to when I was little. The covered bridge on their property is what started my love of covered bridges.

Check out he photos right here.

You’ve seen my photos from Peddler’s Village taken during the summer. (If not, view them here.)  Their annual Christmas Festival was this past weekend, so Kelly and I went back to see what it’s like in winter. It’s a whole different experience. The sub-freezing temperature was made bearable by marshmallow roasting over an open fire, hot cider cooked over a fire, carolers and even a little parade to welcome Santa Claus. Add thousands of Christmas lights and you have a great start to the Christmas season!

Click here to view my pictures from the festival.

After many planned but postponed trips to Lehigh County, PA to go on a self-guided tour of the area’s covered bridges I finally made it there a few weeks ago. I tried to time it so the leaves would be changing but excessive heat this year didn’t do much to help that.

However, it was a really relaxing day and the photos came out great. I thnk I’m now going to start planning to go see more of the many covered bridges throughout Pennsylvania.

The photos came out great! Check them out now!

December has been a productive month for photography on my site. I just added even more photos. You can check out a bunch of photos from Christmas at Longwood Gardens in the Photos section.

Today’s the 300th birthday of Ben Franklin. Of course, here in Philadelphia, that’s a huge deal. It’s the kick-off of several months of festivities celebrating the life of our most famous resident.

One of the biggest highlights is a special exhibit at the National Constitution Center. They’ve got a ton of artifacts etc. I need to get over there and see that that before it departs for its world tour.

Find more details about parties, events, special deals, tour packages and more at GoPhila.com/Ben.

UPDATE: View my photos from when I went to the exhibit here.

I switched to Adobe GoLive as my web site software. I was previosuly using an ancient program called Claris Homepage. It just couldn’t keep up and it didn’t run under OS X. Whle I was moving it over I made a lot of changes to the site. Many of them are asthetic changes and behind the scenes stuff, but I did change a few things that you might want to know about:

- added more photos to the Photos section (Food, Washington DC Trip, Willow Grove Air Show)
- added a google search to the site on the homepage
- added this blog
- added some links and removed others
- added a section in Links to collect the sites I talk about in this blog

I also corrected many formatting problems.

Those of you who use my family tree site… It will be updated next!