Since my whole clan was in the wedding (Camryn was flower girl, Andrew a groomsman, and I was best man), I decided to rent a "real camera"(tm) for the weekend to capture the experience. It was my first time really experimenting with a nice camera. I'm glad I did! I had a lot of fun. Check out the results on flickr:
Feedback welcome - especially from you real photographers out there. Now to start filling my piggy bank for a real camera...
]]>2007 was a big year for me (again). I left Bryght (the company I co-founded in 2004) and a few months later happily joined Lullabot (my absolute favourite job to date). My divorce finalized and I moved. I sold a car and a house. I spent a lot of time working on OpenID (particularly getting it into core for Drupal 6). I traveled to Vancouver, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Barcelona, Providence and Boston. Camryn turned 5, Andrew turned 10, and I turned 30. *Phew*
I'm really looking forward to 2008. I have very high hopes. Work is busy, exciting and looks like it should be a very successful year. I'm happy, healthy and loving life. I want to drink more water, sleep more, see more of the world and meet more people. With day #1 of the year just finished, I'm off to a good start and ready for more.
Bring it on, 2008. I'm ready :)
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unbelievable, my daughter is three years old today - and she's my *baby*! i'm mostly in shock... the baby days are getting further and further behind us. we went out yesterday and ordered her big girl bed, and in a few short days she'll start her parent and tot class at school.
*sob*
happy birthday, camryn. i love you.
]]>spontaneous? well, not so much i guess. we spent a couple days preparing and arranging. i think mostly it's a testament to how bad we've been at "just doing stuff" as a family, but this is as close as we've gotten in a lot of years - something we need to change.
the more interesting part is that - without my explicitly saying anything - none of my co-workers / clients / etc. have any way to tell. i'm still in the same time zone, and i have a reliable internet connection. add in my powerbook and cell phone - and my office location is really irrelevant.
the coolest part? this office has windows and is a 3 minute walk to the beach :)
]]>when the Boris was in town last weekend, he got sucked into doing chalk drawings on the driveway (one of camryn's favourite pastimes). after running out of things - he ended up doing a drawing of trogdor, the burninator. (those of you who don't know strongbad are missing a seriously important part of the internet).
well, andrew thought "trodgor" was hilarious - and has been drawing an "S" followed by a "more different 'S'" ever since. here's his latest:
the cutest part was definitely "dad, how do you spell 'burninator'?". for whatever reason, the drawings of ligers didn't catch on in the same way...
after lots of reading, and emails to breeders we've settled on a breed (vizsla) and looks like we may even have found a breeder. so saturday, we drove out to rockwood ontario to meet the newborn (2 week old) puppies. here's our current favourite (temporarily known as "blue"):
um, yeah, they're cute. like *real* cute.
]]>nevertheless, it resulted in an overwhelming amount of toys... here's a quick recap:
Griffin iTrip FM Audio Transmitter for 3G Apple iPods - while, ideally i'd prefer to never drive... i do actually spend a fair bit of time in the car, because when i do drive it tends to be a trip to downtown toronto - which is a good 45 minutes away (at least!). this will be excellent to have since, well, most radio stinks.
"Linksys WRT54G Wireless-G Router" - i've wanted one of these for a long time. my current wireless setup is only 80211.b - which means i miss out on a lot of speed for my powerbook. also, i've been dying to hack the linux
Apple iSight - oh yeah. you know you want one too.
as if that weren't enough... my darling wife heard my subtle hints for a new, smaller, faster digital camera. so, i am now (after some research and exchanging) the *very* proud owner of a canon sd200. first impressions - this is an awesome little camera, and exactly the kind of thing i was looking for - more later.
so to all of those that i might not see or otherwise communicate with over the next two days:
have a very happy holiday! be safe, and enjoy!
-walkah
]]>of course, if you're not related, but still feel i've been good this year... feel free to be generous.
shameless, i know.
]]>pictures? you want pictures? well, sadly, i forgot to charge my camera first, so you're gonna have to wait until i get a CD full of sandi's pictures. (those of you looking for instant gratification and feeling generous, I'd recommend getting her a Nikon D70 ;) ).
]]>on saturday, andrew's hockey game was at a reasonable hour (8am) which helped start things off right. while i don't have any fancy stats to report, i can say that andrew easily played his best game of this season (which is already a month old!). it's amazing just how far his skating has come over the last year.
after the game, we came back for a yummy brunch and then headed out to brooks farms to get our pumpkins. i must say, if you're in the area, it's a great place to take kids. there's a ton of fun stuff, and it's pretty cheap (compared to lots of kid-friendly activities). andrew and i went there 2 years ago (just after camryn was born) and had promised each other we'd go back (though, i can't remember now why we didn't go last year). the only problem was the weather - it went from sunny and mild to cold and windy to pouring rain (even with a bit of hail).
today was a quiet-in-your-joggers-eat-some-beef-stew kind of day. mmmm. beef stew.
as usual, i have no pictures. but sandi took some... which one day she'll get developed and then one much later day i'll even probably upload some. (those who'd like to see them sooner should get on my get-sandi-into-digital-photography bandwagon).
]]>i only wish i had that much time on my hands too ;)
]]>sometime last week (and i'm not even going to try to remember which day) andrew lost his 8th tooth (8th!!). he's now sporting a nice gap all around his 4 adult teeth (2 top and 2 bottom). and, since andrew lost a tooth, camryn had to get a new one... she's now (finally!) got all of her teeth.
since we had our first grey day of the spring, sandi and i left camryn with gramma for her nap and took andrew to see shrek 2. it was fantastic - i actually laughed out loud (which i also did nemo). it's nice to see that dreamworks is doing their part to keep pixar on their toes :)
otherwise, andrew's got a week left at school, soccer season has started, and everyone is doing just fine.
]]>camryn absolutely loves the idea of having a baby in the family. she was beside herself with excitement when she got to see him. she was still talking about him most of the day yesterday. she's starting to string words together, and sums it up with "baby no-yah mall" (baby noah small) - complete with adorable little hand gestures. :)
]]>i should start, i guess, by mentioning here (since i haven't yet) that we semi-recently finished our basement - giving us lots of extra space. i'm really happy with how it turned out and have to give serious praise to our friend Dan that did most of the construction. amongst other things, it means i now have a really nice space down there for my office. i can officially geek out without offending too many visitors. i'm also in the midst of creating a 'server room' in the storage space by the furnace... that should provide some bloggable experiences, so stay tuned. at the very least, i should be able to put up some pretty geeky pics of it all ;)
so, with the basement project out of the way, we've gotten the itch to tackle some other things around the house. as i speak, our first floor is being painted. next .. we may even buy furniture! who knows.
as for the kids - andrew's hockey season is done, and he's all signed up for soccer. since i haven't in a while, i should publicly proclaim just how proud i was of andrew in his first year of hockey - even his coaches agreed he was likely most improved on his team. watching him really love something and work so hard at it and have so much fun was really awesome. i finally got him signed up for soccer for the summer, so that's next.
one other andrew note, earlier this week he lost 2 teeth in one day... just when the gaps from his previous tooth loss were nearly filled! for those of you playing along at home - that's 6 baby teeth gone.
as for camryn, she continues to grow and grow. and, finally, she's starting to get teeth almost as fast as andrew is losing them. her 4 canine teeth have been taking their sweet time to come down, but one has officially broken and the other three are well on their way. otherwise, she's doing her best to get into as much trouble as possible - we've had to put away the ladder for andrew's bunk bed since she decided she likes playing on the top bunk too!
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