Another Beautiful Camera Magnet...

Under intense pressure from an unnamed person [cough..cough..Jen..cough], I managed to get some new photos up to the blog in record time (record time for me anyway!). I've just posted 28 odd photos of our beautiful little niece. There really isn't a heck of a lot to say except she's beautiful and as you might tell from the photo above, definitely not camera shy! You can click here to see the photos (and don't forget you might want to click the 'view as slideshow' at the upper right when you get there). Enjoy.

Leaf Fight!

Well.. Fall is upon us and Christmas is coming fast. Not much to spout off about right now. Too much work and too little sleep, like always. Emily's enjoying school and learning in leaps and bounds. Even with all the hard work at school, she sure knows how to have fun. There are a few good pics of a leaf fight at Nonno's house a couple of weekends back. No shortage of smiles and rosey cheeks on that day. :)

Bringing it on...

Various shots (most of them harmless, and a few quite nice) from Ruthie's birthday dinner last weekend. David and Margie have come across the pond to visit as well! At the moment Jen is in Las Vegas (poor thing!). As for the picture above...well.. don't ask. You can see the above photo as well as several others right here.

And they thought I wouldn't dare publish them. :)

A Milestone.. for us anyway...

This is truly a post for posterity. Today our little girl officially started school! It's both amazing and sad how quickly time passes. It's definitely a good reminder to make the most of every moment. Emily of course was quite gung-ho on the whole deal. With brand-new lunchbag in hand and a whack of new clothes (thanks to Mom) she's entered the next phase of her life. As I said, Emily thought it was the greatest thing. And of course Mommy cried (but not until after we had dropped her off). She came back after her first day very positive. She was proud to announce she had already had a music class, a French lesson and most importantly her very own lunch! Of course Daddy was outwardly calm and positive as usual. But typing this, well, it's not so easy to remain nonchalant. We know she'll do well, but there are lots of times we both wish she'd remain in diapers a while longer.

Stop right there!

Amazingly, I have managed to upload some more new pics to the Flickr site. There are some great (and messy) new fingerpainting pics in this set. And even better, there are wonderful new pictures of cousins Emily and Sarah. Tell me these aren't two beautiful girls. Uncle Paul and I are probably going to have to keep them locked away until they're 21 !! Maybe we'll both have our shotgun licences by then too! :)

Ev's New Digs, and Baby Sarah's Shower

Yes, that's a hunk of cake on a fork. You can dress her up but you can't take her anywhere I guess...

After some not-so-subtle hints today from Uncle Paul, I thought I had better get my butt in gear and update the blog. (Funny that we haven't seen a blog post from Paul in an age..maybe too busy changing diapers now I guess.). Anyway, I've posted two new sets of photos. The first set of photos contains some shots I took of our first visit to Ev's new place. She seems very comfortable and happy there, and her spirit seems much improved. We visited her today and it sounds like she's getting a lot more visitors than when she was back on Oren Blvd. She's loving that part of it for sure.

The second set of photos is from Baby Sarah's recent shower. It was held in Ruthie's back yard in Gilford and was a big success by all accounts. There's not a lot of shots, but enough to give you the gist of it. Of course I wasn't there for the shower proper (since it was girl's only of course) so the photos I took are from the last couple of hours. Molly, Alison and Janie were on their way out when I arrived but at least I did manage to see them.

As always, I'll try to keep this blog a little more up to date.. Yeah.. we'll see how that goes. ;)

Gee.. do ya think she's posing?

Here's a textbook pose from Emily during our recent outing to Canada's Wonderland. Onlookers were chuckling when they saw her mugging for the camera. We had a great time although Mom tried to avoid the 'spinny' rides at all costs. We also had a great picnic up in Barrie. Of course Ruthie and Jen went overboard with all the food, but I really shouldn't complain now should I. I've uploaded a few of the highlight pics on the Flickr site. Check out the photos here. By the way, Evy moves to her new digs in the next week or so. I'll make sure to take some pics on our first visit and post about them here. Don't forget to check back here soon for those.

Sarah Grace Evelyn has Arrived!

Sarah Grace Evelyn Davies was born on June 23, 2006 in Barrie, Ontario. Congratulations and all our love goes to Paul, Sandy and Corey on their new addition to the family. What a beautiful girl! Jen, Em and I saw her on the 24th and of course I took quite a few pictures. She's quite photogenic, you can already tell! I've posted a few pictures here on the blog, but you can go the new photoset I've added to see some more. Click here to check them out. A proper email will follow of course, but I thought I'd get the pictures up and ready first.

Meredith !!!

On April 4th, 2006 at 2:30pm, an 8 lb-3 oz little wonder arrived. Today I received a comment on a blog post (a few posts down) notifying me that the internet should beware... new grandparents David and Margie have broadband! A short time later I received an email asking me to post a couple of pictures of the little beauty on the site. Here they are. I can't decide whether she got her good looks from Sam or Steve, but of course she's more beautiful than either (I'm sure they wouldn't argue). Cheers you guys. I hope you're enjoying the newest little family member..and still getting some sleep.

The Start of Soccer Season

Emily's first outing at soccer proved to be quite fun. She had a good time as did we. Mommy, Daddy and Nonno were there to see all the great action. Of course Emily looked great courtesy of Uncle Paul, who got the shoes and shin-pads lined up for us. I got quite a few good shots. You can see the rest of them here.

Painful Episode

It is so humbling as a parent (and a person) to sit and watch your child endure any sort of pain. Em had a tooth that had to come out today. Jen and I grabbed and held her hands throughout the process trying our best to comfort her and explain however feebly, that we are doing this to make the pain go away (she had an abscessed tooth). Em has made it easy for us as parents, ridiculously easy. I know that many more parents go through much worse every single day. But days like this remind us of how we would do *anything* to prevent our child from hurting - I'd have jumped into that chair in a heartbeat if I could've been a surrogate for her pain. Of course an hour later she's sitting on the couch watching George Shrinks as if nothing had happened and anticipating the arrival of the tooth fairy later tonight. I believe 5 bucks is on offer for the inaugural visit.

This post is nothing more than a placeholder to remind myself in future years of what it really means to be a father and of what it really means to love my daughter. There will be times when I undoubtedly forget.

Photos A La Mode

It's been a while since I last posted (the one with the soccer/wrestling backyard fun shots) so before anybody screams for more photos, I've uploaded a bunch of new pics to the flickr site. There are shots of Emily and the dogs at Nonno's house, shots from Mothers Day and some others. I've got a few good ones from Lauren's wedding that I'll try to post in the next little while as well.

Ya ya

It goes without saying that we are all glad (and relieved) that Howie is back at home and doing fine after his surgery. The complications and subsequent second operation threw everybody here for a temporary loop. But he thankfully leapt that hurdle. We're so happy he's doing ok.

P.S. Appropriately enough, this photo was taken by Emily (his No.1 Fan) who, at 4 years old, happens to be very adept at using my digital camera.

Easter Weekend - 06 - Happy Birthday Corey!

Easter weekend came and went and we all had a good time. It was Corey's birthday dinner as well - Happy Birthday dude.. I've posted some photos for everyone to see. Emily, Paul and I had a good run-around outside playing soccer/wrestling. And no...I didn't post any embarassing pictures of myself huffing and puffing around out there despite all the laughing about them on Sunday. Such is the power of blogging, I can post only the ones I want! :) Don't worry Auntie Sandy and Grandma Ruthe, I didn't post any embarassing ones of you guys either.. except for the one of Paul's daft look through the kitchen window, he was just asking for that one. :) Thanks to Sandy for taking the outdoor shots, you did a great job - as usual. Hope everyone enjoys them. Click here to see the rest of the photos.

Look out...comin' through...

Look at poor Jessie in these three shots taken in sequence. Brett literally overtakes him 2 leaps. In the middle one you can almost see that he senses his impending doom.. :). I've uploaded a few other nice pics of the dogs playing and of course a few of Emily to the Flickr site. Sure they're a few weeks too late, but better late than never I guess...

More fun in the bathtub..

Captain Morgan has nothing on this girl... Come see the bearded lady...

Those eyes...

It's been a while since I've posted anything here, so I'll make things easy for myself and post a nice picture of our lovely Emily that I took the other day...

Mont Ste. Anne - 2006

I managed to get a few decent shots during our recent skiing trip to Quebec. We had a great time and Emily had her first ski lesson. She loved the skiing, and even managed to take the poma lift all by herself and almost made it right up - dang hay bales. Mind you, she wanted to take a break every 4 or 5 runs to do some snow angels, ahh the life of a 4 year old. The weather was a little snowy and blustery on the first day but from there on in it was just beautiful. The pictures up at the top don't really do it justice. Oh, and by the way Paul, we saw some nice Adidas ski goggles and we need you to outfit us for next season! I've uploaded the set of photos here.

Birthdays and Busy-ness

I was desperate to make sure I posted again before a whole month went by (phew.. just made it!). Anyhow it's been a busy month with getting back from Myrtle and then heading off to Mont Ste. Anne to ski for a week, plus the Ontario Building Code exams I had to write once we arrived back. The skiing pics from Quebec should be up in the next couple of days if I manage to sort through em. For now, take a look at the shots from Howie's birthday. Also, Paul and Sandy should be arriving back this Sunday. Let's hope they had a great holiday...maybe it'll force him to actually do a blog post of his own with some pictures ;)

Myrtle Pics are Now Up

I finally found a bit of time to get the photos from our recent trip to Myrtle Beach posted on the flickr site. Of course I made full use of the new camera and took a lot of shots of my favourite subject (Emily of course!) among other things. I really like the shot you see here. I've made a couple of new photo sets on the flickr site as you will see, just to get things a bit more organized there. So now it's easy for me to point you directly to the set of Myrtle 2006 photos to peruse in your spare time. All in all I think I took over 200 photos but some of them were pretty lame. I've uploaded about 50 that are probably the best ones. Hope you like them. We had a great time, and as you'll see Emily sure did as well. I hope everyone is having a great new year so far. Oh yeah... the pics with me in them were taken by Ruthe who did a great job with my new camera - thanks Ruthie!

Getting Messy...

Well there was no shortage of colourful pictures to take with the new camera recently. We tried the watercolour paints, we tried the special magic fingerpaints (which go on invisible and then magically appear), but Emily was not satisfied. So we broke out the old standard issue fingerpaints and she was finally in mess-making heaven. The person who came up with completely washable fingerpaint should be knighted. Check out some of the more messy moments on the flickr site.