Happy New Year 2012!!11

Josh Kraycik sure knows how to sing a Christmas Song.

If you missed X-Factor finals last night, Josh Kraycik finished second, but I never considered him anything but a winner and that is apparent when you hear him sing this Christmas Song, ‘This then is Christmas’. You’ll definitely be hearing more from Josh.

McAdenville is always a Christmas fantasy…

I try to video McAdenville each year. I will go probably next week. In the meantime, this is the 2010 video. Each and every time I go, it is mesmerizing.

Beautiful, idyllic McAdenville, NC’s Christmas Town USA

During the next couple of weeks, I’ll post some of the videos I’ve made at McAdenville, NC. It’s like a Christmas wonderland and is simply enchanting.

I have to give you an incredible ‘Christmas Story’ update to my Memorial Day post. On that post, I talked about a young soldier that my family and I met while he was fighting in Vietnam. We met him through a reporter Kays Gary, with the Charlotte Observer. Kays printed an annual Christmas list of names submitted to him of soldiers in Vietnam who would like mail. This amazing story (see the original post) has now spanned 44 years and 4 countries to progress thus far. I was shocked last Sunday when I received an e-mail from that post saying ‘Nick Santos is my Daddy! I’m trying to find out about him in that time period.’ We e-mailed back and forth this week and now (Tuesday) we talked on the phone. She is an incredible young woman, just as I would expect Nick’s daughter to be. She e-mailed me a photo of him and her mother and is going to call him to tell him she’s found a part of his life when life was so hard. I can hardly wait to hear from him and I’ll keep you posted.

This story gets me ‘right here’…

www.cbs.com/e/GFmh1IJI1q1mB1EpERNRwmSEa_K1AcAN/news/1/

(Note: I can’t seem to get CBS’s embed code to work, but here’s the link to the video. If anyone knows how to embed this let me know. I don’t usually have a problem with it, but this one is a challenge.)

This week, at least one piece of Journalism in mainstream media shines. That story was aired on 60 Minutes, last Sunday night November, 27th by Nicole Young. It was highlighting the problem of homelessness amoung children, and particularly featured some of the ones in Florida. This wasn’t a ‘whiney’, feel sorry for me, poor me type show. It was more of (their mother deceased and father was out of work) a reality story and it touched me like no story has in a very long time. I was so proud of Arielle and Austin Metzger two of the young people featured in the spot although I’ve never had the priviledge of meeting them. I’m sure their mother would be proud too. They are what we always call the ‘real American spirit’. They held their heads high and while they were in an unbelievable situation, they obviously realized they were better than that. I loved those kids! Now, I know what I want for Christmas and that is to give those two young people a big hug and give a shout out to CBS and 60 Minutes. Give us more great Journalism like this, Please….!!!!!

Lions, leopards videos & Happy Thanksgiving

I uploaded another South Africa video last night. I’ll have more to come and eventually there will be more lion videos. Enjoy.

Hyenas of Sabi Sands, South Africa

These playful hyenas were trying to blend raising a family with feeding a family. Imagine that! Sounds like humans. The babies were so playful and entertaining while the parents were also mindful of feeding the hungry mouth

Botswana River Safari

I now have the Botswana River Safari video uploaded to YouTube. This was one of my favorite safari’s and maybe it was because I was a little intimidated by the hippos. I hope you enjoy it. I have quite a few more videos to edit and upload and I’ll post them as I get them finished.

My video from the African country of Botswana

On a recent trip to Africa, we visited the countries of Botswana, Zambia and South Africa. This is only some of the video footage that I made in the beautiful country of Botswana. It was filmed in and near Chobe National Park. In the next few weeks, I expect to have several other videos uploaded.

Beautiful Botswana

During the last couple of weeks, I was in Africa. The plane trip was a bit grueling with the always more tiny seats and non-customer oriented airlines, but we eventually made it to Livingstone, Zambia and by land on to Chobe National Park in Botswana. It was then that I realized the plane trip was worth it although the airlines could have been a tiny bit hospitable.

We went on two safaris a day and they were absolutely incredible. For the next several days I’ll share some of my photos with you and then, I’ll share my videos once I have them edited and ready for uploading.

I hope you enjoy the photos and I hope each of you will be able to see this unbelievable place sometime.

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The Botswanan Sunset is a sight to behold.

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Baby Elephant Walk must have originated here.

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The lion sleeps day or night.

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The crocks aren’t small either…