Houston

Houston is a big city. And a hot city. We were staying on the east side of town, and there really wasn't much for us to see because of our location and time available to travel. So all we saw was the inside of the Galleria. It's a huge and high end mall. If you are into spending $650 for a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes then this is the place for you! Mind you they did have the regular stores, which probably had different merchandise than Ottawa, so it wasn't all a lost cause. The seminar we attended was good, it was ironic however, because the man giving it was on our plane from Toronto!! He lives there. Boy we could have saved a bit of money and time there eh?

Downtown Houston from the nutty cab
This was as close as we got - we were on the other side of town

Big City = LOTS of traffic!

View from the hotel - not much to see
our workshop was in a little building
beside that big on on the right

Another view from the hotel.

Off to Houtson

I'm off to Houston today. My colleague and I are attending a one day conference on implementing an LMS (if you really need to know what that is, leave a comment). As we only have tonight and tomorrow night to visit the city, our only goal is this place:

The Galleria

A huge mall right beside our hotel! Fun. I wish we were staying at least an extra day, but it was too complicated with arranging it, and to be away from the kids an extra day (I sound nuts eh!!) So next time!

Happy Monday to Wednesday!

Quiet Sunday

We are spending a quiet Sunday at home since yesterday was go-go-go! The girls are quite tired, but in pretty good spirits. They spent the morning playing, which gave me some time to scrap a couple of pages:




This afternoon, I have to pack because I'm off to Houston, TX tomorrow. It's a quick trip, but should be neat to be in Texas, can't wait to hear all those southern accents!!

As promised some shots from the party yesterday:

Getting ready to swim

Scott and Paige

The girls get prime spots at the snack table.

The gang eat supper.

Gillian eats the ketchup!

Never Say Never....

The rest of the week was busy at work, and a VERY late Wednesday night game... more like Thursday morning, by the time we got off the ice, meant not much blogging this week. Eric also had a golf tourney Thursday with dinner, then his hockey end of season party Friday, so I was on my own with the girls. Thursday night I basically went to bed as the same time as them... fun! Friday I made it a little later, but wasn't really in the mood to write or scrapbook. What I did do however, was have another go at the photo I had tried to scan for my Mum, but couldn't get an image from. I looked at the negative a little closer and noticed that there was some detail in my grandparents faces. So I fiddled with my scanner, adjusted a few things and got this:

So it makes me think what did I do?? But it also makes me think - Never say never when it comes to this stuff, there may always be a possibility!

Today we went to our friends house for a pool party. They had just build a new pool in their backyard, so they invited a group of their friends over, of all ages and had a party! Abby was excited about it. Before her nap she said - I want to go to the pool party, when I get up. So when she got up we packed her backpack, she got her hat and sunglasses on, and then had to wait because Gillian was still sleeping and Eric was at the Yacht club. It was so cute to see her and how excited she was to go. Of course while there, we couldn't get her out of the pool! She went in on three different occasions. By the time we left she was saying "I'm tired...".

I'll download the pool party pictures tomorrow, in the meantime I did this layout from photos I took at the daycare on Friday! More swimming....

It's that time of year

Eric always said that the first trees to change colour are found on Notch road in Chelsea. And he was right. I noticed the one tree, the one that always changes first, was turning red about two weeks ago. Each day I drove past it to go to work, it was turning more and more and then today I noticed the other trees around it following suit. I know it's early, but with the recent cooler temperatures - especially at night, the darker mornings and the trees on Notch... something tells me it's that time of year. The end of summer (I hear gasps and boos coming from the audience). Let us all have a moment...

Ok, as you may know I've stated scanning old slides, photos and film. I just did a batch of old negative films from my Mum dating back to the 1940s. They were in surprisingly good condition considering they've been kept in an envelope for the past 60 years, only having a few scratches and marks. It's been fun to scan the film negative and see what pops up on the screen. They are shots of my Mum, her sister and brother, as well as a few of her Mom and a couple of her Dad. I'll sit down with my Mum this weekend to tag each photo with information on the history and dates. In addition to scanning, I'll have to do a little restoration work, as some of them are over, or under-exposed, they are scratched or have lots of dust.

Here is a sample of the SOOS (Straight out of Scanner):

As you can see it's quite under-exposed, crooked, and what you can't see is that it's got some noise and dust. While I didn't have the time, or patience right now to remove every spec of dust - I still haven't reached that chapter in the book - I did do some global fix it's and came up with this:

It shows that there is a lot of detail not seen in the original scan, and show the potential of what can be done. So don't ever think that a negative or slide is lost... unless it looks something like this:

Unfortunately in this case it was too over-exposed and there wasn't enough "data" in the blown out areas to recover it. It's too bad because it's one of the only photos of my grandmother and grandfather I scanned.

It's been really fun discovering all these old images and I hope to share more with you in the weeks to come! A couple things that I've quickly learned from working through this process which we could all apply now: 1) take more photos of yourself... if you are like me, I'm always behind the camera - like my grandfather was 2) document, document, document. Document the time, place, ages, etc. It's a little easier now because of the metadata included with each digital photo taken, but there is so much more to a photo that the date!

Shutterfly Book - The Bruce

This is the first Shutterfly Book I've created:

It's just posted to their gallery for now, but I'll order a copy when I get the discount coupon code next week. I can't wait to see what it looks like!

Weekend Recap

We had a nice weekend. Friday was "Girls Night" here. And by girls night I mean, Abby, Gillian and Me - no crazy partying, don't worry! Eric plays hockey on Friday nights, so it's just the girls, and we usually have a good time. This was a short girls night, because Eric came home right after his game ended at 6:30. The rest of the night was spent watching the Olympics.

Saturday we did errands in the morning, we dropped pants off for hemming, Eric got his hair cut, and various other things at the Rideau Center. We went early enough so it wasn't too busy. I took Gillian out of the stroller to walk on her own and she did a pretty good job staying on track, only veering off into a couple of stores and stopping outside of Aldo to dance to the music blaring inside! People were giggling at her and I had to keep one woman away from grabbing her. What is with people needed to grab and stroke your children. I know they are cute, but hands off buddy!! When we returned home we had some lunch, Eric went for a run, and the three of us got some much needed nap time in.

Saturday night Shawna and Paige came over at the last minute for supper. Her hubby Scott was away camping for the weekend, so she didn't want to be alone.


We whipped up a delicious meal of stir fried garlic shrimp, braised baby bok choy and steak. After supper, we gave them all a bath which was cute!




We put Gillian to bed, then lit our outdoor fire, which we had prepared the other day, and roasted marshmallows for dessert. I love when we have a fire, I really don't know why we don't do it more often, it's so relaxing and unique to be able to do that right in our backyard! Abby didn't stay up much longer, but Paige could not be separated from our little slide. She kept going back over and over again! Hopefully she slept well that night for Shawna.

On Sunday, Eric volunteered at the yacht club, and we played outside all morning. In the afternoon we went to Eric's parents place for a swim and ended up staying for supper. I think Abby will really become a water bug, because we couldn't take her out of the river, even when she was shivering and chattering her teeth!

Overall it was a nice weekend!

Teeth and Tired

I went to the dentist yesterday with Gillian. You may be thinking to yourself that she is too young to be seeing a dentist at 14 months, but I had a suspicion that things weren't right in her mouth. She got her teeth in all the wrong order after the first two bottom teeth pushed through at 7 months. After the first two bottom the top two front teeth are supposed to come, but in Gillian's case her eye teeth pushed through (or what I think are her eye teeth). Next came the molars (which usually come at a year), and then came the front teeth, the bottom eye teeth and her canines - yes all at the same time! while the rest of her teeth continued to grow, her two front teeth pushed through the skin and then basically stopped growing for a couple of months, and that is where the worrying started. Then my friend came over for dinner with her son and she mentioned that he would probably have to have his Frenulum on his upper lip snipped, because it was extending too far down and would eventually cause him to have a gap in his front teeth. So it made me thing about Gillian and her problems and decided to call the dentist the next day.


I went and it wasn't great news. The frenum is a problem, but it's not what is causing her front teeth not to grow. Not only are they not growing, when you pull her gums back you can see two teeth way up in her gums starting to push through, defintely not in the right place. He thought that perhaps there is some serious crowding going on, she has a bad over bite (not sure how he saw that...) and that her two bottom teeth are resting directly on the top teeth, further preventing them from advancing. He is going to give me a referal to a pediatric ortho. for a consultation, but basically said that there isn't much that can be done at this stage, because she is so young. But I look forward to what the pediatric ortho will say... so stay tuned!

Despite her teeth, she is still beautiful to me!!

Other than that craziness, an aquantance of Eric's passed away a couple of days ago. He was in a car crash around the same time that Gillian was born (He made the unfortunate choice to drive home drunk and drove off the road), which left him in a semi-comatose state, and after 15 months of fighting, I guess he lost the fight. I only met him a couple of times, but its really is a sad story and I feel for his parents.

So needless to say this week has left us very tired and so we are looking forward to a nice weekend, a fire in our outdoor fire pit, and good quality family time! Hope you all have that too!

Sunday and another hike

We had our friends over for breakfast this morning. They also have two little girls around the ages of Abby and Gillian. We had a good time and the girls had fun playing fort in Abby's bed. There was a lot of giggling going on which was fun to watch.

For the afternoon we decided to go on another walk since the weather was holding up and the sun was out. We went to the Meech Creek Valley. The same area where we had our wedding photos taken. Gillian was again in the backpack carrier, which she is happy in and Abby walked. I got some really nice photos from the walk:







After that we came home and had pizza for dinner! Yummy. That is it for the day. Back to work tomorrow.

Walk in the woods

This morning was sunny, and forecast to be the only sunny time of the weekend so we went for a walk in the woods. We drove over to the Gatineau Park visitors centre and walked the Sugar Bush trail. It's really not a very exciting trail, but it's short, flat & wide and not rocky. Perfect for Abby to walk, and for Gillan too, but she stayed in the backpack carrier the whole time. It was a nice little walk. Here a the photos. I didn't get too many good ones, because my camera is terrible in low light. Most of them were blurry which is very frustrating!!






After the walk we stopped in at the Chelsea's Market, which is held in a field beside all the soccer fields. It's the place many people go to on Saturday mornings to pick up a few things and meet for a smoothie or a cup of coffee. We bumped into a couple neighbours as well as Phyllis, Savanna, and her Mom. I'm not a huge fan of the market, I think it could be so much more than it actually is, not too many fruits and veggies, and really not too many stalls - probably 15 -20 in all. But it's fun to get out and see the neighbours and the girls love it.

On another note. We watched the Olympic opening ceremonies last night. And all I can say is WOW! It's incredible how much money and effort they put into it. My favourite part was the firework footsteps walking across Beijing and then the 2008 drummers all drumming in unison... just so freakin' cool!

Here is a layout I did today. It's a cute shot of the girls peeking over the raining on the deck, looking for Bender's ball...

Birthday Recap...

Abigail is now officially 3. The day didn't start off too well for her, however. She's had been pretty miserable over the past few days for whatever reason, and so it seemed to come to a head yesterday morning. I left for work a little later, and could see she was whiny and crying a lot before I left. But I guess after I left Eric had a tough time with her screaming and pushing Gillian. The report for the daycare when I picked her up wasn't much better. I got the "She had a rough day" report from Phyl. Luckily, when we got home she seemed to turn around, perhaps in anticipation of her big birthday celebration.

Both our parents came over, Gail bringing a cute giraffe cake and my parents a fun bath toy gift. We ate burgers, french fries, salads, and corn - which Eric prepared the day before on his last day off. It was fun, everyone was happy and Abby loved all the attention. Actually Gillian did too - taking this opportunity to show off her ability to sing and dance...

Here are of the, not so great, photos:

Look who's three!

Gillian gives us a little show, singing and dancing.

And here are a few of the outakes...

Abby loved her giraffe cake.
Just not the sparkler.

They all got drunk.
Abby sits there and wonders what is happening
to her grandparents...

Another fabulous family shot....
We need to hire a professional!

And, with all the confusion of drunk parents and grandparents, flaming sparklers, and a screaming Abby - Gillian opens the screen door and tries to run for it.

In all seriousness, thanks to Eric, my parents and his parents for making Abby's 3 rd birthday a great one!!

Takin' it easy...

Monday was a chill out day. And a well deserved one! We were all going a bit nuts, especially the girls. I stayed home all day with the girls and Eric only ventured out once to go for his run. The girls had great naps, and so did I which I really needed since I almost passed out while making dinner the night before!

We painted, watered the plants (which I only mention because I NEVER water the plants anymore - I have no idea how they are surviving!!), didn't do laundry, and played in the sprinkler (which Gillian has a love/hate relationship with...)

Loves to look at it

Hates to get wet!

Nothing like watering the fowers na-k-ed!

A nice relaxing day all around. We also took advantage of the fact that it was sunny and spent most of the day outside (note Abby's legs - and the mosquito bites!).

Today was back to work for me, Eric still had today off. I was a little freaked out about biking to work because a woman was sexually assaulted on the bike path I take, right along the route I take each day! It's nuts how I can't even feel safe riding in the middle of the day. I really wonder what is wrong with people and the human race - are there just too many of us and that our genetic makeup isn't able to handle the expansion of our-selves, as a result there are more and more nuts out there... just a thought.

Anyway it' wasn't all doom and gloom, because we FINALLY got a new washer and dryer! For the record I will never buy anything from Colonial again. It was a total nightmare trying to get this resolved and they seriously dropped the ball here. And it wasn't only Colonial who messed up, it was also the warranty repair place and Frigidaire! They all screwed up here and we were the ones who suffered! The ironic thing is that the delivery guys had no idea how to install and stack our washer and dryer, which is what happened the first time around - it took 3 visits by 6 different guys to simply stack the machines!! Obviously a high IQ is not required for that job!

I'm just happy I can finally wash my clothes again! I definitely owe my parents and Eric's parents a lot for putting up with us coming over and doing load after load of laundry! Thanks!!

So tonight is my labour day. 3 years ago tonight, Eric and I went over to my parents house to wait out the 12 wait for Abigail to arrive.

Here I am in the triage room - in full force of labour!
And a couple of hours later.
It's amazing her mouth still looks the same,
as do her fingers and eyes!

Tomorrow we'll be celebrating Abby turning 3!

POTD:
Watermelon

Bye for now!

Toddlerville and Montreal

So we are STILL living without a washer. After two months of no washer, I'm officially going to loose my mind. Yesterday turned into a not so good day. Abby woke up with a bleeding nose, one that wouldn't stop, she was incredibly cranky and irritable also. The bleeding nose stopped, but the mood didn't. She basically spent the day pushing Gillian around and not listening to me EVER! Since Eric was volunteering at the GRYC, I decided that I couldn't go shopping, but had to go to Mom and Dad's to do our laundry. It takes so long to do one load, so I only got through 1 1/2 loads before I had to go home for the kid's nap. Abby, of course, chose yesterday not to nap, and spent the day screaming, crying and being the toddler from hell. Luckily there was a light at the end of the day, and that was dinner at our friends Leif and Wendy's place. As always we had a wonderful meal, some great wine and a fun with Shamu in their new pool!

Gillian checks out Daddy working the crash
boat at the GRYC Invitational.

Looking for Bender's ball here.

Today we drove to Montreal for my cousin Frank and Christine's son's baptism. I was designated god-mother and hadn't seen them in a while, so it was nice to go and catch up. It was a lot to do in a day - especially with the two girls, but worth it. Although poor little Richard Jr. didn't care so much for the baptism part and did what any toddler would do - scream! But in the end he was baptized, and we got to introduce Abby and Gillian to the rest of the family. I'd like to plan a more civilized visit with the family - one where we don't have to go running out the door because the girls are starting to melt down!

Little Richard (newly baptized) and Abby (un-baptized)
These two are 7 months apart.

The older generation -
(not sure who the gentleman on the left it), then my Dad, My Uncle Peter,
my Mom and Frank (Richard jr.'s dad and from the middle generation.

Gillian checks out her (second) cousins

Richard, Adrienne and Abigail take a juice break

it was hot in the church...
(Dad, Frank, Eric and Christine Denis - the second)

It was a long weekend, not a whole lot of resting and too much rushing from one thing to the next. So we've designated tomorrow a veg out day. We'll go swimming, maybe go for a walk in the woods, but generally just take it easy and not rush anywhere with crazy toddler and baby in hand!