High steppin' for the holidays

To round out the holiday celebrations, I'm offering you, dear readers, two videos plus a few stills that capture a pair of festive events from the North Shore.  Try as I might to develop a theme linking them, I couldn't come up with anything even remotely plausible, so I just hand them to you plain, unadorned as the day they were shot by my inhouse videographer and wife using her Iphone.  (Thanks Trudi!).  This is the first time I've tried to incorporate video into my blog post, I hope it works.

The first presents 13.5 month old Adella on Christmas day, demonstrating her newly acquired skill of walking on two legs.  She has taken to it in a big way, and now that she has begun it's really hard to keep up with her.

The other video records an annual polar bear swim held New Year's day at Fisherman's Beach in Swampscott where we live.  After the video I will also include a few still shots for your enjoyment.  The weather was particularly kind to the polar bears this year, a sunny, almost balmy 49 degrees with little wind, and water temperature well above freezing at 43 degrees.  Trudi and I chickened out this year, our excuse being, we didn't know the local practices.  It turns out that there's very little ceremony attached to it.  You wear your suit under some sweats, don a funny hat, and run into the water yelling at the top of your voice and flailing your arms.  Watch for us next year!

A few stills....