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.

Christmas And a New Camera!

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

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

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!

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

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

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...

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....

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....

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

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

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

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 ... :)