The Beeton Blog

Sarah's Fifth!

2011-06-26T11:20:00.000-04:00

Happy Birthday Sarah! We had a great time yesterday and so did the kids. :)

More photos are here.

Track and Field - 2011

2011-06-19T06:57:00.000-04:00

We were so proud of Emily doing her best this year at the school track meet. She managed to get 1st in the 50m and 200m races, which I captured on video and 1st also in the long jump (which I didn't get on video). Great job Em!!

Dance Recital - May 2011

2011-05-16T15:25:00.000-04:00

Emily had her dance recital this weekend. Here's a video of her two numbers at the rehearsal on Friday. If you want to watch the HD version then head directly over here instead.

Early Spring

2011-05-01T08:24:00.000-04:00

Finally got around to uploading a few more recent photos. Some leftover shots from Myrtle Beach and some from early April. You can check this link for all the photos. But here are a few choice items ;)

Growing up waaaay too fast. :|

What you get when you ask two girls to scream.

What a ham. Reminds me of her father. :)

Finally an un-posed one. :)

Oh yeah Santa.. here's what she wants...

2010-12-15T12:51:00.005-05:00

A couple of weeks ago while browsing through the aisles at Shopper's Drug Mart, Emily found the perfect Christmas gift to add to her list... I wonder if it comes with a free toothbrush. :)

By the way, in case you're interested.. it's 10 lbs. and $79.00 :)

Not fading away yet..

2010-10-10T09:29:00.004-04:00

Wow. It's been a year since I posted anything here. My bad. Will get back on it.

For now, here are a couple of videos I did of Emily in the past little while:

Third Time's a Charm from Richard Querin on Vimeo.

No Lack of Hustle from Richard Querin on Vimeo.

Word up!!!

2009-10-05T23:27:00.004-04:00

Oh no.. Emily is in da house!! Our little homey is now taking Hip-Hop classes. To say she loves it would be a severe understatement! Check it out:

Hip Hop Short from Richard Querin on Vimeo.

Emily and Cashew

2009-08-09T09:14:00.002-04:00

Emily sure enjoyed horseback riding camp this summer. She rode Cashew again this year. Here's a quick video of her last day:

Riding Camp - August 2009 from Richard Querin on Vimeo.

Goooaaaalll !

2009-05-20T23:08:00.002-04:00

Now here's something worth celebrating.. Emily scored her first goal of the 09 soccer season on the first night!

You can check out a few good soccer pics right here.

The 2008 Holiday Season (and a maple dip donut)

2009-01-01T21:33:00.002-05:00

Okay, enough of the torture for David and Margy. :) Onward and upward for 2009. I've uploaded a few new photos from recent holiday events. Hope everyone is doing well:

Emily's First Piano Recital
Emily's Visit with Santa
2008 Christmas Concert
Xmas 2008 Photos from Nonno's and Ruthe and Howies
Photos from the winter trek to Lockport to celebrate Emily's 7th Birthday

ps. Sorry for the tease Margy, but dang that was one fresh donut!. You would have really enjoyed it. :)

Astronomy Trumps Dinosaurs and Sharks

2008-11-25T22:51:00.001-05:00

This one's just for posterity. A week or so ago, Emily completed her first ever school project. Her subject of choice was the origin of the universe. Needless to say there was not one right answer, but she's darn interested in explaining to us that our sun is one of billions of other stars, and that we live in the Milky Way galaxy. Sadly, that was news to my Mom. ;)

Personally I spent my elementary years doing projects on basically two things: sharks and dinosaurs. But hey, astronomy is a-ok with me too. :)

One Tough Cookie

2008-10-19T00:16:00.002-04:00

Okay.. it's been another 3 months of neglect. But there are some new pics (with others on the way in the next little while). All of these ones were from July 2008:

Visit to Ruthes

Visit with Ev

Horseback Riding Camp

Visit to Luciana's

Paul and Sandy's Pool

Hope you enjoy them!

You want photos? Boy do I have photos...

2008-06-25T11:19:00.011-04:00

Now I could tell you that my computer was stolen, I'd forgotten my login password, or that I was busy fostering world peace, but I'm an honest guy. I just kept looking at the hundreds (literally) of photos sitting on my computer and thinking "getting those up on the net will be a royal pain.. there's just got to be something else I could be doing". But no more. They're up. At least up until the beginning of April. Here's the rundown:

We went to Disneyworld in Florida. Jen, Em and I flew down to Myrtle and drove from there with Howie and Ruthe down to Orlando to meet up with my Mom and Dad (who had driven down). We spent about 5 or 6 days in Fla, two of which were spent at Disney itself. We had an awesome time and Emily (along with all of us) really enjoyed it. We'll definitely try to go back when Em's a bit older. The set of Disney photos can be had right here.

Midway through our week down in Florida, the boys decided we'd take a day to head over to Kennedy Space Center which was only about an hour's drive away. The weather was great and we had a good time there. Lots of neat stuff to see. You can just tell by the picture on the left that the two elders enjoyed themselves. Here's the photo set.

Our Disney trip was bookended by short stays with Howie and Ruthe at their condo in Myrtle Beach. Nice weather for beach walks and plenty of time to rest and relax (and shop of course). The condo was very nice and having a nice big LCD tv in the living room didn't hurt either. Click here for some great photos of Myrtle Beach 08.

I've also got some good photos from a visit to Ruthe and Howie's place. The girls enjoyed dressing up in feather boas and masks. Check them out here.

Some more nice photos of Emily and Sarah (no big shortage of those!) from a visit to Sandy and Paul's place in March are right here as well.

Meredith, Sam and Steve came across the pond for a visit as well. I managed to get some nice photos from dinner and a few during our Father-Daughter walk through the woods. We should really do that more often. :)

So that brings me up to the beginning of April. I've got photos from May and June to post as well, but I haven't quite finished getting them ready. Expect another blog post in a week or so. I don't want to fall of this horse after going thorough all the effort of climbing back on. :)

Ninja Girl and New Photos

2008-02-03T19:40:00.001-05:00

Any complaints for the delay in posting new photos will be met by force. As you can see above, Emily has become a ninja for hire. Her rates are reasonable (chocolate and pancakes suffice). :)

I've got a bunch of new photos uploaded. The new photos start a little bit before Christmas and finish up quite recently. The links are shown below.

I hope everyone is doing ok!!

Showing off the Gingerbread House

Santa Clause Parade 2007

Christmas Photos 2007

New Years 2007

Ev and Em's Birthday Supper at Sarah's

Ninja Girl

A new site, but the same weblog

2008-01-08T23:55:00.000-05:00

I've spent the last little while building a new website at: rfquerin.org. I've moved my other blog to a new platform but for the time being, this one will remain as is. I may change this one over in the near future if I ever find the time.

So you don't have to change a thing, I'll still be posting here bi-monthly as usual. ;)

But check out the new site, there's nothing earth-shattering over there but some info on other stuff I've been working on.

Hope everyone is keeping well!

Thank you.. thankyouverymuch

2007-11-28T00:42:00.001-05:00

Thank you.. thankyouverymuch

I know I know. Don't say it. It's been a month and half. I know.

If you've got any complaints you can talk to the big boss. The one with the sideburns and glasses pictured above.

There are about 50 new pics up on the Flickr site. I haven't organized them too much. But there is the Hot Tub Set, the Nature Walk Set and a few Halloween shots. That only covers about 30 shots. You can view all of those plus about 20 other new ones on the main photo stream.

Winter has come early it seems so expect lots of snowball fights and sledding shots as the season progresses.

Hope everyone enjoys the photos!

Blogged with Flock

Big Arse Pumpkin

2007-10-09T09:08:00.001-04:00

Big Arse Pumpkin

I don't use my cameraphone too often (the quality sucks) but I was glad to have it when I noticed this guy in front of me on my way into Newmarket! You'd need a chainsaw to carve it!

Blogged with Flock

Weddings, Hummingbirds and Las Vegas Baby!

2007-09-23T23:31:00.001-04:00

As unbelievable as it may sound, I've managed to get off my duff and actually post some more photos. We had a great time at Crystal and Derek's wedding and at the open house up at Paul and Wandy's place. I managed to get a few nice shots. You can check the set of photos out by clicking here. And don't forget that you can view it as a slideshow once you get there (look for a 'view as slideshow' link on the upper right when you get there.)

We also had a great trip out to Vegas. I got a decent round of golf in with Howie and the scenery was just superb. We didn't lose a lot of money (hard to do when you're playing the nickel slots) and had a wonderful time. The Vegas set of photos is right here.

I even managed to get a few decent photos of the flowers and the hummingbirds at Ruthe and Howie's. For that set of photos click here.

Well whatta ya know... finally a blog update!

2007-08-31T00:05:00.001-04:00

As always, it took a threatening email from a close relative (in this case Aunty Sandy) before I got off my duff and uploaded new pics.

I've uploaded a few new soccer pics. Em got her first GOAL on her last day of soccer. Of course Daddy was too busy clapping and cheering to have taken any pictures of that moment!

A heaping helping of pics from our recent week off in Haliburton makes up the rest of it. There are loads of great shots from that week.

We had Sarah doing her best Jerry Lewis impression with Uncle's dollar store reading glasses, we had Emily doing her utmost to be both fashionable and beautiful and then to our surprise we had the UFO sighting pic. Emily seems to have loved Grandma's expression on that one! While not a great photo by any means, I don't think it will be forgotten.

And Grandma... the 'sumo' pic didn't get uploaded and will remain in my possession for safe-keeping. Unless of course someone is willing to pay me a hefty sum for it! It's currently locked away in the 'warm-a-tron'. :)

Fiddling with photos and the new Ride!

2007-05-17T00:58:00.000-04:00

As you may or may not have noticed, I am fooling around with the header at the top of this blog. I'm not sure I like it the way it is. I may fiddle some more... In the meantime, here's a couple of photos of my new ride!! It's a 2007 Kia Rio Ex-Sport. It drives quite nicely, eases the pain at the gas station and most importantly Emily likes it! :)

Playing Catch-Up

2007-05-05T12:29:00.000-04:00

Believe it or not, there are now almost 250 new photos up on the Flickr site as of this morning. I won't go into what they all are, but I'll point you to the various photo sets for you to check out at your leisure. Hopefully it won't be another 3 month dry spell before posting new ones! Here are the sets:

Myrtle Beach 2007 vacation shots

Various Em and Sarah photos from February 2007

Various Em and Sarah photos from March 2007

The Combo birthday party in March in Gilford

Various Em and Sarah photos from April 2007 (this one has the darling hat and bandana pics!)

Easter egg painting pics from April 2007

Mark's visit from April 2007

Shots of our recent Niagara Falls mini-trip

Some more of Emily's skating pics

Phew!

No new pics, but learn something useful instead!

2007-04-27T14:49:00.001-04:00

Click To Play

There are two types of Internet users, those that use RSS and those that don't. This video is for the people who could save time using RSS, but don't know where to start.

While I haven't uploaded any new pics in quite a while, I do have quite a few sitting on my home PC just waiting for me to get off my butt and post. It'll happen soon. But in the meantime, here's a little education for you:

Right now, the vast majority of internet users go around to their favourite websites (blogs, news sites, whatever) every once in a while to see if anything new has been posted. If you're checking this one every once in a while you must be getting pretty P.O'd that nothing new has been posted. ;)

Wouldn't it be good if all those websites automatically provided any updated posts and content to you, instead of you having to check them all every once in a while?

Every time one of those sites (like this blog) puts up a new post, or article, or news story, the info would be forwarded for you to read (or ignore). You wouldn't have to visit those sites to see the updated info unless you wanted to.

That's exactly what RSS is for. Rather than me wasting time trying to explain it, you should watch the above video.

And I'll try to get more Emily and Sarah pics up on the site soon enough.

The three of us are off to Niagara Falls for a mini-mini vacation this weekend. Let's hope the weather holds up and Emily can properly enjoy the sights.

Hope everyone is doing well.

Before I get in any more trouble....

2007-02-09T22:44:00.000-05:00

[Click here to go to the photo set]

Before I get smacked down again by the currently flu-ridden Aunty Sandy, I thought I'd better get crackin' and post some more photos. I've got lots of them but going through them and posting them hasn't been as high up my to-do list as it should've been. So here we go with the first of a few new posts over the next week or so.

Two weeks into the new year we had Emily's 5th birthday party for her friends. We had it at a play place down in Concord. There was an abundance of bouncing, running, climbing and pizza-eating. All in all, a great success. After the party, Paul, Sandy, Sarah, Steve, Sam, Meridith, Jen, Emily and I (phew!) headed over to a brand new (and hence happily quiet) Tim Horton's for some Timbits, coffee and tea. It was good fun and I managed to get a few more good shots of the kids before we headed into the big-arse Vaughan Mills Mall for a little shopping.

We had a great time with Sam, Steve and Meredith during their visit. Hopefully it won't be too long before we get to see them (and more precisely Meredith) again. ;)

And Sandy, take care of yourself and that little one. Hopefully you can pull yourself out of bed and/or away from the toilet long enough to enjoy the pictures. :)

Paul - Get Back Home!

Holidays, Birthdays and Celebrations!

2007-01-12T23:26:00.000-05:00

It's been a busy holiday season with Christmas, Emily's 5th birthday, New Years, Ev's 100th birthday and the visitors from England to top it all off. Needless to say I snapped lots of pics. I finally managed to upload some of them so you can check them out here:

Ev's 100th Birthday Photos
New Years in Lockport
Dinner at Ruthies

There are a few more still to do, most notably Ev's dinner at the Quaint House and Emily's first foray into skating. But those will have to wait for now...

Another Beautiful Camera Magnet...

2006-12-14T23:03:00.000-05:00

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!

2006-11-21T21:56:00.000-05:00

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...

2006-09-29T22:49:00.000-04:00

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...

2006-09-05T23:04:00.000-04:00

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!

2006-09-05T22:40:00.000-04:00

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

2006-08-26T23:52:00.000-04:00

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?

2006-07-19T23:37:00.000-04:00

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!

2006-06-25T00:31:00.000-04:00

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 !!!

2006-06-08T21:34:00.000-04:00

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

2006-06-05T22:38:00.000-04:00

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

2006-05-29T21:46:00.000-04:00

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

2006-05-17T23:33:00.000-04:00

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

2006-05-17T23:25:00.000-04:00

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!

2006-04-17T23:13:00.000-04:00

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...

2006-04-04T21:49:00.000-04:00

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..

2006-03-27T22:06:00.000-05:00

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

Those eyes...

2006-03-14T22:55:00.000-05:00

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

2006-02-19T23:07:00.000-05:00

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

2006-02-17T23:22:00.000-05:00

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

2006-01-18T00:03:00.000-05:00

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...

2006-01-02T22:27:00.000-05:00

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.

Christmas And a New Camera!

2005-12-29T00:03:00.000-05:00

Well Christmas came and as usual Jen outspent me by a wide margin...this year I got a new digital camera (a digital SLR no less!). It's a Canon Digital Rebel XT (or Canon 350D for you folks across the pond) and it's beautiful! Emily received a whole wack of gifts as expected and her birthday party is tomorrow so she's bracing for a few more as well. I've uploaded some photos to the flickr site to show off my new toy. Hope everyone had a safe and happy Christmas. Onward and upward to the New Year!

Ballerina

2005-12-08T22:33:00.000-05:00

The prima ballerina finally got the chance to show off her skills. Cramming all the excited camera-wielding parents into the studio, the girls put on quite a show. I managed to get a few decent shots which you can see here. It was really great to see her so happy. Emily headed off to celebrate at an exquisite luncheon at Chez McDonalds with parents and grandparents in tow. (Sorry you missed it Uncle Paul - we'll make it up with a nice burger sometime soon). Big Macs, chicken nuggets and fries were enjoyed by all.

Collingwood And Room Upgrades

2005-12-08T22:24:00.000-05:00

Well it seems Mom lucked out and won a room upgrade to the 'Presidential' suite during her recent company conference up in Collingwood. Emily and I hurried up there to take a look and spend the night in roomy comfort. With multiple TV's running Berenstain Bears, snow on the ground and an abundant supply of hot chocolate, it goes without saying that the little one was quite impressed with the whole situation. They've really improved the whole Blue Mountain area since I was there last (ages and ages ago). A definite choice for a quick weekend away. I've posted a few pics of Em that I took while we were there. Click here to see them.

Happy Birthday Angelica!

2005-11-15T20:31:00.000-05:00

Emily's good friend Angelica had her birthday party this past Sunday. It was great fun to see the girls getting super-excited (aka hyper) about everything. Various cosmetics and their application was one of the biggest hits of the party, with balloons and various chocolate cakes coming a very close second. The food for all the parents and family at the party was great too. Thanks Angie. Check out the new photos that have been posted.

Halloween 2005

2005-11-15T20:20:00.000-05:00

Halloween 2005 was a great success. Em loved dressing up as Cinderella to tour the neighbourhood for candy. Even better, she was able to wear her 2nd costume, a unicorn outfit, to hand out fistfuls of candy to the other kids once she was back. It was nice to see that she enjoyed giving out candy even more than getting it. Yes, I know that will change, but we can at least hope that it won't! Grandma Ruthe and Yaya made dinner and did front door duty while we trick-or-treated around the block. All in all a wonderful night. Check out the flickr site to see some new photos.

A Couple of Thanksgiving Pics

2005-10-29T00:26:00.000-04:00

I've only posted a couple of photos from this past Thanksgiving. The vast majority of the shots I took were well, remarkably unremarkable. It is now only a couple of days until Cinderella hits the streets of Beeton looking for treats. And only a day after that, David and Margy arrive with their stockpile of chocolatey goodness. I think that Uncle Paul and Aunty Sandy might be touching down tonight coming back from Cuba if I remember correctly (which is a pretty rare thing). And Jen's back from Dallas tomorrow - although checking the clock right now, that should mean 'today'. So dear readers, now that I've filled you in on all the exciting comings and goings you can get on with your lives ;)

What are essentially funny quotes...

2005-10-07T14:32:00.000-04:00

Here are a few funny quotes about languages.. (at least I find them funny...):

American English is essentially English after having been wiped off with a dirty sponge.
--J.R.R. Tolkien

American English is essentially your Queen's English as bastardized by colonists, or is it as colonized by bastards?
--ilvi

American English is essentially British English without the funny accent. [Or is that Canadian English?
--Aleks Dubh

Welsh is essentially what appears on the screen after you have inadvertently been resting your elbow on the keyboard.
--And Rosta

Welsh is essentially the only language that can have four consecutive L's.
--Danny Weir

Italian is essentially bad Latin.
--Eugene Holman

Spanish is essentially bad Italian.
--Eugene Holman

French is essentially the language that Americans don't learn before travelling abroad.
--Dan Seriff

There are what appears to be a few hundred other ones here.

Whatever happened to....

2005-10-03T08:47:00.000-04:00

For those of us who can remember (maybe it's only me...) here's a couple of links related to the obscure Barbapapa tv show. Turns out the origins of the series are French I believe.. That would explain a lot. :) Here is the 'official' site, and this is a fan site. Boy, the useful information just keeps on comin' . Clickety-click...

Goodbye Summer ... Here comes Fall....

2005-09-30T06:53:00.000-04:00

Well I guess it won't warm back up to 30 degrees any time soon. At least we've got Halloween, skiing and skating to look forward to. I've uploaded a few new pictures to the flickr site if you want to have a look. I haven't had much time to add much to the blog except fiddle with the header graphic above. Hopefully I'll be able to get some more decent posts up a bit more regularly.

The Onion Online Newspaper Gets a Face Lift

2005-08-31T16:09:00.000-04:00

The Onion satirical news site received a makeover recently. They've exposed signficantly more content (including their news archives) from behind their paid service. A recent read of the front page items had me chuckling. If you're into satire without being easily offended then you'll like the site. They've also added an rss feed so you can subscribe to it using services like Bloglines for updates without explicitly visiting the site.

A New Batch is Up

2005-08-28T11:57:00.000-04:00

em-paul-pool001
Originally uploaded by Richard Querin.

I just uploaded a dozen or so recent photos to the flickr site. There are a couple shots of Evelyn (see previous post below), several around the pool, and a few from Nonno's place.

Keeping Up Appearances

2005-08-28T11:52:00.000-04:00

ev-party001
Originally uploaded by Richard Querin.

Anybody who knows Ev realizes this is not so out of character. Evelyn Price..puddin' rice.. eat it once and ... :)

Not sure if this'll work or not...

2005-08-23T22:34:00.000-04:00

I threw together a little video clip to see how if I could manage to post it online for people to see. Don't worry Paul... no cartwheels.. I wouldn't want to get sued! Take a look. The clip is here. It is about 2MB so be patient if you're on dial-up. You can also right-click on the link and choose 'Save Target As..' in order to save the video to your local hard drive as well. Let me know if the filetype is not playable. It should be playable by most windows machines, but I'm not guaranteeing anything.

View From Above

2005-08-02T23:22:00.000-04:00

I just wanted to post this one direct because I like it. It might get buried on the Flickr site so I thought I'd stick it directly here.

Villa Nightingale

2005-08-02T23:15:00.000-04:00

Boy, we're sure making that pool worth your while guys! Somebody in particular is having the greatest summer on record so far because of it. Thanks Auntie, Uncle and Cousin.

Moore Lake - Part Deux

2005-08-02T22:59:00.000-04:00

Jen, and I made the trip up to Moore Lake once again, this time under the false pretenses of inspecting Mike's construction practices. On this trip however we were joined by first-time boater Emily. Turns out Mike had help from Bart and Bart's dad as well. Of course all construction was carried out under the watchful eye of site-superintendent Stacey. We had a great time once again and took some pictures to prove it. There are a few wakeboarding shots of Mike and Bart, a couple of Cooper (who spent half the day in the water it seemed) and of course one good one of Emily on her first boat ride. You can check them out here. Thanks again guys.

Palin's Travels

2005-07-28T22:01:00.000-04:00

I came across this link that travel writing fans (and others) might be interested in (are you listening Margy?). It's Michael Palin's travel writing site. For those who might not know - Michael is from Monty Python and played 'K-K-K-Ken' in A Fish Called Wanda. The site makes 6 of his books available for free online reading. They've received excellent reviews. The site also contains other info such as news, videos and other interesting stuff from him.

Globe Trotter

2005-07-26T00:06:00.000-04:00

For anybody who hasn't seen it yet, Google has come out with a program called Google Earth. It uses satellite imagery to map the globe. Some portions of it have quite detailed images. It's pretty powerful stuff. Of course the first thing I searched for was my own address and luckily it has good detailed images for Beeton. You can see my house in the picture on the left (that black blob out in the end of the driveway is my Saturn!!), I added the arrow. It's also neat for going to far away places, again, some of which have very detailed images. You can see the screenshot that I took from the Grand Canyon. Somehow it also gets terrain information so you can really go into the canyon and actually look back out from the bottom of it. The navigation takes a little getting used to but once you get the hang of it it's quite fun. It can also superimpose roads, borders, and even lodging and restaurants! There's a lot here to fool around with. And of course the best part is that it's free. It really requires a broadband connection, but supposedly will run on just about any pc that's less than 4 years old. The power of typing in some address or town name across the globe and then watching as you zoom way way up and fly across the continents is really amazing. And it works very simply like google does. You just type in say, 'Beeton,ON' or 'Las Vegas, NV' or 'Swansea, Wales' and it just zips over there and starts zooming in. Very very neat.

Googling the Moon...

2005-07-20T16:52:00.000-04:00

For those of you who haven't yet tried it, Google Maps is a pretty slick free map service with satellite imagery (for even more amazing capabilities, see Google Earth). Well anyways, they've now got a site called Google Moon which gives some NASA imagery of the landing sites of the Apollo missions on the moon. Give it a try and make sure you zoom in all the way! :)

Uncle and Swim Coach

2005-07-13T21:19:00.000-04:00

poolparty001
Originally uploaded by Richard Querin.

One of my favourite pics. I thought I'd post it separately in case it was missed on the flickr site.

Moore Lake

2005-07-13T21:13:00.000-04:00

moorelakeJul05006
Originally uploaded by Richard Querin.

We were up to the Barker's cottage this past weekend for quick visit. Some photos have been added... both of the creeps and of the cottage (and even one of a wakeboard babe!)

More Fun Poolside

2005-07-13T21:06:00.000-04:00

poolparty002
Originally uploaded by Richard Querin.

Some new pictures are posted in the gallery to have a peek at. Aunty and Uncle's pool has been a favourite destination this summer, let's hope they don't start charging admission! It felt a little weird not being up there this weekend...but we made up for it Monday night! Thanks guys.

Off to the races..

2005-07-08T07:44:00.000-04:00

Off to the Toronto Molson Indy today, courtesy of Jen getting two friday passes (with VIP Pit walk-through no less!). Let's hope the hospitality tents are all they're cracked up to be!

The Great Gupster

2005-07-06T12:39:00.000-04:00

Paul (and Sandy) have a blog! It's called The Great Gupster. Everyone run for cover!! :)

Go Wild...

2005-07-06T00:01:00.000-04:00

safari005_
Originally uploaded by Richard Querin.

We made the trip down to the wilds of the Freelton-Cambridge area of Ontario this past weekend to African Lion Safari. We took my car in for the tour and luckily the baboons found it extremely boring compared to the multitude of roof-rack laden SUV's and minivans and didn't want to hop on for a ride - to Jen's disappointment. Emily absolutely loved it as she got to sit up front with Mom out of the car seat. A baboon immediately hopped on the side window of the minivan in front of us and peed on the mirror...likely to the absolute delight of the kids inside of it (but not to the poor van owner). One of the female lions circled our car a couple of times within inches of the side window. The size of these cats was just incredible. Unfortunately I didn't get a clear shot at that point. Click here to take a look at the photos I did manage to get.

Getting The Plumbing In Order

2005-06-30T10:09:00.000-04:00

Today Emily told Grandma that she had to pee. And she told her this while watching the Aristocats no less!(one of her current favourites, from which she is rarely distracted). Maybe not front page news to most of you, but it's still some sort of milestone in a child's (and parent's) life. Whether Em agrees with that if she reads this 20 years from now..who knows. But Jen and I are happy about it. And of course the Grandparents too. Not sure how happy Huggies Corp. and Pampers Inc. will be.. Hope everyone has a happy dry day today :)

Summer Fun

2005-06-15T23:36:00.000-04:00

CooperEmilySketch
Originally uploaded by Richard Querin.

Howdy.. There are new photos uploaded: a few taken poolside at the Nightingale Villa up in Barrie (aka Sandy and Paul's place) and a few with Coop and Oakley courtesy of Mike & Stacey (thanks guys). Click on the sketch at right to get there or the 'My Photo Gallery on Flickr' link on the right hand side.

Yardwork and Torrential Rains

2005-06-10T22:53:00.000-04:00

yardwork
Originally uploaded by Richard Querin.

With the lack of rain(except if you live in Barrie! ) mowing the lawn has become a more casual affair.

Our Mutual Friend

2005-06-09T09:37:00.000-04:00

For those not already in the know, Philip has just started a blog. It's called Our Mutual Friend.

BubbleHelper

2005-06-05T15:55:00.000-04:00

BubbleHelper
Originally uploaded by Richard Querin.

Here's a picture of Steve helping Emily with her new passion of the moment..soap bubbles.

A reminder...

2005-06-05T13:49:00.000-04:00

Just a reminder that if this is your first time visiting a weblog, the oldest posts are at the bottom. So scroll down and start from the bottom. Then when you check out the weblog again at some other time, you'll know that the most recent posts are at the top.

Wow..that was easy!

2005-06-05T13:43:00.000-04:00

em080
Originally uploaded by Richard Querin.

This photo was put up on my weblog directly from flickr. Just brought up the picture I wanted and then clicked the 'blogthis' button, set up the blog info and presto. It's now easy to do. Me so proud. That was amazingly simple.

The World's Longest 'Quick Post'

2005-06-05T13:16:00.000-04:00

This is just a quick post for anyone who might be interested in creating a blog or posting photos or whatever. It's just some really simple information on how to do these things and where to go etc..

Creating a Weblog or "Blog"

Creating a weblog (like this one) is simple and entirely free. All you need is internet access and that's about it. Actually you probably also need an email address but you've likely already got that. There are several places you can go to create a blog for free. They all have different strengths and weaknesses, but for the novice it doesn't really matter. For a more proper and thorough description click here.

Some of the free choices are:

Microsoft's MSN Spaces - which gives a more "windows" like page. It's has pre-built lists for favourite music and I think you can store a photo album on your blog as well. I registered for a space click here to see it, but there's nothing there quite yet. It's kind of pre-built and you fill stuff in. I'm not sure how customizeable it is.

Blogger (this one) - this is the one I use. It's owned by Google and is fairly simple to use. You just set up your own free account, pick a template (a page style and layout) from a bunch of pre-existing ones and then start posting. It's pretty simple to do and really takes only a few minutes to set up a page and start posting. You can modify the page all you want after if you know anything about HTML, or just leave it alone and just start posting to it.

LiveJournal - this is another free service similar to Google. I've never used it so I'm not sure how good it is. It has a free version and then a pay upgrade which gives some more features.

Some terms that require a little explanation:

A blog is simply a web page that usually appears in reverse chronological order, so that the most recent entries are at the top. They can be very personal, news oriented, specifically focused on one topic, or about anything. They are set up both by individuals and businesses. Blogs can contain just text, or pictures or videos to download or just about anything. Most of the ones I read are mostly text (like news stories etc..). There are blogs on almost any topic you can imagine. You can blog about some topic you like, or use it just to let everybody know how you are doing.

RSS - really simple syndication. This is a really powerful tool. You can visit a blog just like any other website, but most blogs (and almost any news site) also provide something called an RSS feed. This is a piece of information made available from your blog to everyone else so that people can be notified if you update your site and what the update is.

RSS Aggregator - This is a program (either installed on your local computer or online) that scans the internet for any RSS feeds you've subscribed to and notifies you if any of them have been updated since you last read them. All this is done without you going to any sites. Effectively you can build a newspaper from all the sources you want without ever visiting them and it's kept up to date constantly. For instance, CBC has several RSS feeds you can subscribe to such as World Headlines, Sports, National News etc.. that will feed you the headlines as they appear. And you just check your aggregator and shows you which ones have been updated and shows you the updates, so most times you don't even have to go to the specific site. So someone could subscribe to the feed from this site and be notified and shown the update in their aggregator without even lifting a finger to check in here.

I use an online aggregator called Bloglines which is free. It's easy to subscribe to rss feeds just by copying an rss feed address from the site (look for a small orange rss logo on the site) and pasting it into bloglines when you add a feed. That's all there is to it. So I can check if anything I regularly read has been updated and I can check this from whatever computer I'm at since it's online.

How to post photos: Well there isn't a huge amount I know about right now. I have started using Flickr since it has kind of a neat online gallery that lets you store photos in different sets and lets users view a slideshow. And it doesn't really give any limit to the storage you can use. I use something called Hello from Blogger that comes as part of Picasa (both also owned by Google now) and this lets me upload any photo directly from my pc. I think that in order for me to put a photo right in the page here I still have to use the Hello tool. I'm not sure if there is any easier way at the moment in Blogger. Of course if you sign up for a free MSN Spaces blog then it might be easier on that service.

In any case, if you want to just store photos online for others to see, use Flickr. If you want to post photos into a blog you can use Hello (if you use Blogger) or some other means if you use MSN Spaces or something else. I'm still really just fiddling around with this so there might be some much simpler way I don't know of yet.

Well that's likely a hell of a lot more than a quick post... Of course there is a lot more to it, but I really don't know a heck of a lot more than that and it works just fine for me. If anything still seems utterly confusing then post a comment to this post to discuss it. Or email me at: rfquerin@gmail.com or rico.jd@primus.ca The gmail.com account is nice because it will forward emails it receives to both my work and home email automatically.

Trying Something New

2005-06-03T23:18:00.000-04:00

Here's the first post on this weblog. It ain't much, but it's here. I've added a link on the right to my photos that are stored on Flickr. I'll see how easy (or hard) it is to put a photo from flickr directly in my blog in an upcoming post.

This blog might replace the rico.jd website eventually. It's just a heck of a lot easier to maintain, allows for comments and makes it so that people can keep more up to date with each other (that is if other people start their own weblogs). We'll see how it goes!