gratitude in the everyday

busy week!


the grasshoppers are everywhere. i have never LOVED the creatures. which puts them on a level playing field with all bugs. but they are fascinating to look at. my smart boy reminded me that they like to eat plants. so we shoooed it away!

last weekend, we visited my in laws. brought home some yummy fresh garden goodness. peas. carrots. potatoes. swiss chard. zucchini. onions. i'm told that there is more to come!

this is a miniature version of our former sandbox. the design is being carefully guided by our resident "bumble-bee" and "pink piggy".

they keep us on the up and up.

literally!

they took a break and went to day camp together last week. which got Kiara singing all types of tunes about "daycamp". they also let their anniversary-celebrating parents have a few days - and a night! - to themselves. life is a party for these two.

i also announced some amazing news on my scrapbooking blog. i will have a layout published in Canadian Scrapbooker in December. i've had some good friends (and a certain husband of mine) bugging me for a few years now to send in some of my work....but i kept telling them that my stuff was not magazine worthy. annoying friends (and husband)....they didn't get off my case!! sooo apparently i also have to admit that THEY WERE RIGHT, AND I WAS WRONG!! oddly, that fact does not upset me...Kristian is doing the happy dance with me. and also chanting, "i told you so" repeatedly. it is a rough and tough life i lead.....

14 years

14 years.

5, 114 days.

122, 736 hours.

7, 364, 160 minutes.

THRILLED that this clock has not stopped......and continues to tick away....

happy anniversary to my one and only sweetheart!!!

soooo to celebrate....we took our little darlings out to Chuck E. Cheese tonight! i think it did help to show them that this is something important to celebrate.

no worries....because i'm sure you are thinking we are insane....haha....we also plan to celebrate by ourselves...maybe even have an entire night away from our little darlings. we'll see how life goes.

holiday

Monday...


our family tradition.

Heritage Festival.

this year our babies joined the vikings....

Kiara got into the dancing at the Scandinavian tent.

a classmate of Kristians' from the UofA Master Studies of Science in Engineering has been dancing with this group for several years.

a lot of the countries have fairly warm traditional dresses. i took that as a good indication that their climates were usually on the "cooler" side. one other fact we have observed is that most of the national dishes around the world have potato as an ingredient in one form or another. and the hotter the climate....the hotter the food! also the volume of the music increases closer to the equator.... not to mention the inclusion of a "frozen" food at the food tents of the hotter countries.

i find this all an interesting generalization. i'm sure there is a history class somewhere that anayzes this in great detail....

this year we were joined by Kristians' family. Kiara was being goofy with gramma. every time gramma looked over her shoulder, Kiara would duck and hide her head under her hands.

she did enjoy the dancing. all of it. this "dragon dance" was at the Borneo pavilion. she tried to join in. twice. and this was not a good thing.

do you see Aidan right behind her? there was a "balloon man" making balloon creatures for the kids. Aidan wanted wings. so that he could go faster. exactly what we needed. we cried with him when one of the wings popped on the walk back to the car. he sat down, off to the side of the trail, to take a rock out of his shoe. and the balloon rubbed against a twig. after the shock and grief was over he told Kristian that he wanted to make balloons that wouldn't pop. he has a few ideas too. isn't this how all the great inventions were born?!


thirteen years ago Kristian and i got married.

i know. we are over halfway to our "silver" anniverary. {this is the "lace" anniversary. thrilling.}

i think he is aging nicely. it helps when he is married to such a low maintenance, easy-going and all round wonderful person such as myself. or maybe not. this is one of my favourite photos of him. and i'm responsible for snapping it!

he surprised me with a new camera for our anniversary.

and now i have to take a photography course to understand it. for now i've just been playing around and getting used to it. i have done some reading on what it can do. {slow process} and i can't wait to try these new techinques. so you may have to put up with some unnecessary photograpy for awhile. i think i'm on page 15 of the manual...not even to the really intersting stuff yet!

so we got the Nikon D80 with a great lens. we are both very happy.

i love the detail in this shot. there seems to be so much more dimension in the photo.

and remember that i'm not close to maximising what this camera can actually do.

here is a shot using the action auto setting. fast camera! i still love our Sony point and shoot. but it amazes me how fast the shutter is on the SLR.

i sure got spoiled.

and i was not a good wife. it was one of those years when i didn't even make him a card. it just isn't his thing. he still has his surprise album from December and his Fathers' Day gifts from the past 3 years at home. these were meant to be at work. sitting on his desk. so his co-workers can daily see how incredible his family is.....

i think the only gift i could give him that would make him truly happy would be an airline ticket somewhere. i don't think that will be happening for a long time. unfortunately. for now, he'll just have to put up with me snapping photos of him....