Vacation plans derailed

Unfortunately, our vacation plans to head up to our friends' trailer have been postponed. Katrina has been fighting a terrible 'flu for the past four days and it shows no signs of mercy! Big hugs, my friend!! I know how yucky you feel and wish you a speedy recovery!

So, once we decided that it would be better to reschedule, Gary and I were at a loss. What do we do with ourselves, with EIGHT days (for him, TWELVE for me!! :D) looming in front of us?!? Well, a road trip is definitely in order! However, being the holiday weekend, all campsites are already booked. So where to go?!?

Well, we found a hotel/pass package for African Lion Safari for only $159.99! Includes one night accomodations, breakfast, park passes and goodies for the kids! I'm looking forward to taking some awesome shots with my zoom lens... African Lion Safari also has a water park and jungle gym area so we should be good to go for the whole day!! We're going to take the bus tour (so as to save our leased vehicle from the wrath of the frenzied monkeys!). I'm hoping that, because we're going during the week, it will be less busy!

Plus, it's in Cambridge, which happens to be 1) an outlet shoppers' haven and 2) a location of Henry's, my favourite camera store... :D

Just have to share...

As I was proofing these photos for my clients last night, I was delighted to find that I had captured some adorable photos of their girls. I had resigned myself to the fact that we would have to re-shoot, as it was cold and Baby M. was a bit fussy. Although we did not get the perfect family photo, I managed to salvage a few that I hope my clients will let me include in my portfolio! Thanks, J & D, for making beautiful babies to photograph!! :)

Quick draw McGraw!

That's me! I just have a quick minute to blog, before I have to turn to the tasks at hand that are waiting for me on my desk: layout and bio for the Scraptivity website; 2 circle journals, patiently biding their time; and 60+ proofs to be resized and put to CD for a client. And I thought that I'd throw in five or six loads of laundry to boot! Who said my life wasn't glamourous!! :)

A busy weekend at the Sykes' household. While I spent the better part of the day at work, Gary took the kids to the park Saturday morning for a couple of hours and wore them out! Upon my return home, he said to me, incredulously, "Our daughter is a daredevil!!" Um, yeah, honey, tell me something I DON'T know! HaHa!

Today, I had a bridal shower for Angie, a co-worker of Gary's. The sweetest person you could ever hope to meet - and an awesome photographer too! For those of you who received our "Got Eggnog?" Christmas cards, you have your very own piece of Angie Art!! It was a great time - got to hang out and eat some awesome food with some of Gary's co-workers (or former, I should say!): Shannon, Julie and Stephanie. I also managed to speak to Angie's sister-in-law-to-be about having a booth at an upcoming Pregnancy, Birthing and Parenting Expo that she is running. I am hoping to find my niche in the oversaturated photography market by specializing in pregnancy and newborn b&w photos. The show is September 24th in Kingsville - hopefully I can get everything ready by then!!

While I was at Angie's shower, Connor went to an end-of-the-year pool party at one of his classmates' home. He had a GREAT time!! And despite slathering on the sunscreen, he has come home with a bit of a tan! That boy just has the Italian olive skin!! He makes Aili look even more pale when they are side by side! :)

And I did not take ONE SINGLE photo all weekend!! :( I'm seriously going into withdrawal mode...

Oh, I lied. I did take some self portraits for my Scraptivity layout - not all together flattering or award-winning, but at least I have one to use!



Thanks for looking... and reading!

Oops! Time flies...

When you're up to your ears in paperwork!

I can't believe that it's been five days since I last had a chance to update. Not that I think everyone is waiting on the edge of their seats for my pearly words of wisdom! But I had hoped to use this blog as a journal of sorts... guess my life hasn't been all that interesting lately :(

This month's been crazy for me at work, and it's starting to stress me out... I just can't wait for this last inventory to be done and over with, because then we are heading to Musselman Lake to spend the long weekend with my dear, dear friend, Kat and her family! I am soooo looking forward to some R&R, great food (you are an awesome cook, my friend!) and some good clean wholesome fun!! There will be TONS of activities to keep the kids occupied, and Aili will be in her glory, lording over all three boys, I'm sure... :)

I love the fact that our families mesh together so well! Connor and her eldest son, Ethan, are the same age and love all the same things (don't all six year olds?!?). And Evan - well, he can melt my heart with his sweet smile! I'm bringing my 2GB, 1GB, 512MB and 256MB cards for my Nikon... that should last me through five or six days, shouldn't it?!?

Speaking of which, I downloaded photos from today - Aili and I went to the park that we just discovered in our subdivision!! There were plans to build one, but I hadn't heard that they had finished! As soon as the wagon turned the corner and the playground came into view, she began to chant... 'Lide! 'Lide! 'Lide! Of course I don't have any photos of her on the slide, because I was too busy chasing that little monkey all over the equipment! That girl has NO FEAR!!! I did take this photo of her on the swing though (she was contained in the baby seat so it was safe for me to venture a photo!) :

I was experimenting with the manual focus on my 70-300mm lens, which, when shooting at a f-stop of 4.5, has an EXTREMELY short depth of field, which sadly you can tell, as the swing is more in focus than she is! But I love the expression of pure unadulterated GLEE on her face as we played... and besides, it's the only way to learn, right?!?

Happy Father's Day!!

I'll admit it - I'm one lucky lady. I have a wonderful man who is an amazing dad to his kids, a loving and supportive husband, full of goodness, handy (and helpful!) around the house, generous with his love and time, and a general all around great guy!

And he's handsome to boot! ;)

So today, we, as mothers, honour the fathers like him - and those who are not - for being the men in our lives. Thank you for your unwavering love, even when we have been less than deserving. Thank you for the sacrifices you make. Thank you for believing in us, even when we did not believe in ourselves. Thank you for showing us that the glass is half full. Thank you for looking at us after 5, 10 or even 25 years and thinking that we are even more beautiful than when you first laid eyes on us. Thank you for the support in raising our children and holding our hands during difficult decisions. Thank you for all that you do, as it makes us love you even more... xoxo

Scraptivity DT submissions

I've received the go ahead to post our submissions for the Scraptivity Design Team Contest. There are several very talented women that made the DT as well, and while they are out of my league, I am really happy with the work that I submitted.

The Toothless Wonder!!

I finally managed to squeeze in some time today to capture Connor's toothless grin on file. Well, the boy does NOT stand still!! Add to fact that I am using my zoom lens, which has a very sensitive auto-focus, and he's kicking around his constant companion - a soccor ball... not his baby sister!! ;) - and you've got yourself a challenge.

I did manage to get one:

Isn't he handsome?!?

Just to be sure that I had an acceptable photo, I asked him to sit down inside for a minute and got out my tripod. By the time I was set up, Aili had dragged over a chair beside him and was saying "CHEESE! CHEESE!!" I think I take too many photos...

Anyhow, I'm delighted with the shots that I capture today! I love this one too, of my beautiful, chubby-cheeked girl:

Thanks for looking!

This is good for my MOJO!!!

Being on the Scraptivity design team, that is! Since finding out about making the team, I have been filled with the overwhelming urge to scrapbook!! Which is good, because for the longest time, if I wasn't working on a project or a circle journal, I would sit at my desk for hours staring at my photos. Just moving them around and picking up pieces of paper, only to put them down again! Either that, or I would just re-organize all of my supplies!

But last night, I found that the GDT (Guest Design Team member) scraplift was being posted on June 15th - that's today! It was already 11:15pm so I wasn't going to attempt anything. But after seeing Patti's (patticakes) great layout that was chosen, I was inspired!! And this is what resulted:



This layout was made using the new June 2006 kit. Such a great kit - I'm loving this paper! And despite the late hours that resulted from this layout, I love how it turned out! Thanks, Patti, for the inspiration! And thanks to you for looking!

Oh... My.... Heck!!!

I MADE THE SCRAPTIV!TY DESIGN TEAM!!!!

I'm so excited!! It's been quite the roller coaster for the last couple of days, waiting for the news, and when I hadn't heard from Wendy by Tuesday morning, I was sure that I hadn't made it! I kept checking my emails (actually, Gary checked them because I don't have access at work!) and voice mails all day until I left work at 4:15pm. I picked up Aili, then Gary and Connor and headed home. Aili dragged me right to the swing set so I didn't even glance at the phone to see if there were any messages. I seriously thought that the calls had all gone out! I checked the messages around 6pm last night and was ecstatic to hear Wendy's voice on the line!!

The competition was tough - 85 entries! I feel so honoured to be chosen, as I knew of several who had applied that were very talented and a wonderful contribution to the S! forum. I am happy to say that several of my friends (Denise, Ki, Jennifer and Connie) were also chosen - and I'm looking forward to getting to know the remaining two winners, Chantal and Sylvie!

Here are my winning entries:

(edited to remove them until I've got the OK from Wendy! oops!)

Thanks again to Katrina for helping me choose which three to send in!!

I'm really looking forward to getting the kits and stretching my creativity - maybe this is the boost that my scrapbooking mojo needs!!

I'm allowed to share!!

Thanks to David and Judy for letting me share a little sneak peek of their two lovelies from our photo shoot on Sunday. These girls are a hoot - and simply a reflection of their wonderful parents!

Makin' it easy...

My job, that is. It's easy to create beautiful portraits when you have such lovelies to photograph. They have an equally adorable baby brother, too, but he was cold and hungry!

Once I get their parents' permission, I will post these little gems from our photo shoot tonight and update the blog. Watch out for in ten years, I'm sure that these faces will be gracing fashion magazines everywhere!

Which led me to thinking... what are our kids going to grow up to be? There are so many roads that they can travel down. I'm curious to see what their choices will be...

Heck, I'd like to know what *I'M* going to be when I grow up... :)

Love it!

Thank you, Patti (patticakes from the Scraptivity forum), for the link to Jessica Sprague's blog and her fantastic PhotoShop Fridays!! I thought I really knew the ins and outs of PS, but it turns out I was only scratching the surface!

I have been searching, albeit not very hard, for an action that I could use with PhotoShop to give my clients' proofs that artsy fartsy, grungy edge that we used to get from developing our photos in the labs (in the olden days! LOL!). Lo and behold! In week three on her blog, Jessica posted this awesome mask that is sooooo easy to use!! I used it on the photo of Connor in the previous post. I also tried it out on this adorable photo of Connor and Aili:

I love this effect!! Thank you, Jessica!! You RAWK!!

Our baby's growing up!!

Well, after weeks (and I'm talkin' WEEKS!) of being wobbly, Connor's first tooth fell out while he was brushing them before bed tonight!! And of course, he had to march right downstairs and interrupt Gary's poker tournament to show him! Being the awesome dad that he is, Gary stopped play and made the appropriate whooping sounds! :) We've wrapped it up in tissue and it's awaiting the illustrious Tooth Fairy's arrival... Luckily, the Tooth Fairy won at poker tonight so there's a bit of cash in the house! :)

Ironically, today after Connor's shower, I said to him, "You know, buddy - I'm not really happy with the photos that I took of you with your loose tooth. We should take them again before that tooth falls out!" So he obliged and I got this stunner:

What a handsome young man he is turning into! Even with that spiky hair he wanted to sport tonight! :)

So this is it - my last "baby" photo of my first born... I think I may cry.

Toot! Toot!!

I have mentioned earlier that I am lucky enough to be working with the wonderful ladies at Canadian Scrapbooker as a writer. But I have also been blessed to have had my scrapbooking work published by some of the industry's magazines!

My first published layout was in Canadian Scrapbooker. What an honour to have my first one in a Canadian magazine ("about Canadians, for Canadians, by Canadians!")!! This layout of Aili, Precious Baby, appeared in the Spring '06 issue:
















I've also had three others picked up! Memory Makers requested this layout, Top Ten Reasons I Wanted a Little Girl, for a Babies Special Issue Publication that just came out in May '06.

















I have a layout entitled Bath Time in the upcoming Babies Idea Book by Scrapbook Trends (due out July '06) and one of my favourite layouts, You Bring Me Joy, was just requested by Canadian Scrapbooker for their Fall '06 issue! Of course, I can't share those with you just yet... :D

Thanks for listening to me toot!!

By the way, for those not familiar with the "scrapbooking lingo", "tooting" is another word for an announcement that you've been published... not what you're thinking! :D

Tagged!

Melissa (k23m) from Scraptivity! challenged us to complete these sentences... and you know how I love a challenge! :D

I AM: happy!
I WANT: to be a SAHM...
I HAVE: a wonderful hubby and two great kids!
I WISH: that I always had the answer...
I HATE: fake and/or hypocrytical people. Period.
I MISS: my mom :(
I HEAR: a child in a mall call out, "Mamma?" and I instinctively turn...
I WONDER: when being a Mom gets easier?
I REGRET: not saving more money when I was younger!
I AM NOT: patient. At all.
I DANCE: like nobody's watchin'...
I SING: out loud, all the time...
I CRY: when I am very, very angry...
I AM NOT ALWAYS: right... (but don't tell my husband!) :)
I MAKE WITH MY HANDS: legacies that they can pass down through generations, through my talents.
I WRITE: a letter to each of my children every year on their birthday...
I CONFUSE: "need" with "want"...
I NEED: (see above)...
I SHOULD: go to bed earlier
I START: conversations with complete strangers!! :D
I FINISH: people's sentences sometimes... (see "I AM NOT:" above)

Thanks, Melissa! That was fun... and a bit enlightening and embarrassing at the same time! :D

Sweet peas!!

This weekend, we finally got a chance to get together with our friends, Dawn and John, and their family. We have been friends for a long time, and we were just discussing how our lives have been eerily similar over the years. Dawn and I met at the Board Office and we left at the same time. We helped them moved in March '99, when Dawn told us she was expecting! Ironically, I became pregnant a month later... AND we moved into a house just around the corner!! Liam and Connor were born within seven weeks of each other!! And then we had our daughters within six weeks of each other!!

Anyhow, they're wonderful people and hosts - John is an amazing cook! So while our children played, we got to visit (in between minor mishaps and busy toddlers!). I, of course, brought my camera and when I noticed Aili and Kayleigh sitting together, I just *had* to snap a few! They turned out adorable - I'm so glad Dawn agreed to let me share them!

Field trip!!

Today was Connor's last field trip of the year. And ironically, they went to Point Pelee in Leamington, my hometown where I was born and raised! We loaded him up with sunscreen and bugspray, stuffed his knapsack with all the required bring-alongs... and gave him my old digital camera to take.

He loves to take photos. So much so, that on the last trip, he took so many photos of the trip TO the museum that once he got there, he had run out of batteries AND disk space! :) So as we handed him the camera today, we reminded him... NO photos on the way THERE! We wanted to see photos of his field trip AT the location.

Fast forward to tonight as we're downloading them onto our 'puter... there's ONE photo of his friend, Kabir, and his dad in front of the bus. He took a few photos of the lake and this GREAT photo at the Boardwalk:

and then about sixty of the trip home!! I think we now own a photo of every house from here to Leamington...

But so as to not squash his fledging photography enthusiasm, we complimented him on the effort... and reminded him that NEXT time, we'd like to see more of the actual Point... :D

The View from Above

Yep. This is it. My daughter's crazy head of hair.

It is the first thing on which everyone comments. (Either that, or the fact that her ears are pierced?!?) My sisters laugh about it every time they see her, and tell everyone they know about their niece with the crazy hair. :)

I am at a loss at what to do with it. It has grown, in the last few months, by leaps and bounds... but only down the middle, like some obscene sort of curly mohawk. The bangs aren't long enough to put up in a barrette. The sides aren't long enough to put up in a pony or pigtails. The top is at least five inches long, but you'd never know it, from the riot of curls in which it nests.

She comes by it honestly, at least. Gary had a FULL head of blondish curls as a baby, while I had the little "wings" on either side for, well... forever it seems!!

And so... I'll just bide my time, admiring all the little girls with their hair up in ponytails, collecting pretty barrettes and clips until one day... I will finally get my wish and put two little ponies in that wild, wonderful curly mess on her head!! :)

Continuing to play catch up...

I'm not doing a great job at keeping this more current, am I??!!

June is a crazy month for me - I have two inventories, one at each Shoppers (June 7th and June 27th) plus a 3-day internal audit smack dab in the middle on the 14th!! Ack! I'm not too worried about the audit - just some filing to get done before then!

Last entry saw me rambling about our professional lives... As for our family life, things are crazy, just the way we like it!! Connor is in Grade 1 at Puce Public School this year and will be 7 in December. He has shot up several inches in the last few months. He's now 48 inches tall (yes, that's FOUR feet!!) and weighs in at a hefty 58 lbs!! But he's very lean - must be all muscle mass!

He's started soccor this year and is a natural!! I'm sure that his Italian and English heritages have SOMETHING to do with that! :D He loves to play in goal, but is equally comfortable playing on the field.

He left for his first practice wearing a T-shirt and shorts, and got geared up at the field. He walked into the house after practice, wearing his game jersey, shin pads and cleats, and I had a Mommy Moment. You know, when you look at your child and realize that he's moved past the point you though he was at, and has grown before you realized it.


This photo was taken at his second practice. The kids are all 6 and 7 years of age, and at the stage where everyone moves en masse after the ball!

Connor is also continuing with his swimming lessons - he's a little fish! He can swim the length of the pool and has a very strong backstroke. What a difference a year makes!

Aili is also growing by leaps and bounds! She is going to be two in August!! When did THAT happen?!?!
Photo by Sooters

She is loving her four days a week at Franco-Sol and has adapted to the French language easily. She can already say several french words, including merci (thank you), a demain (see you tomorrow), au revoir (good bye) and biscuit (cookie). She is a regular chatterbox and quite the DIVA already!! She knows what she wants and more importantly, what she DOESN'T!!


As for our other baby, Simon... we have bad news. He was diagnosed with spinal arthritis in March 2006 and we had resigned ourselves to the fact that our 8 1/2 year old "puppy" was no longer that. The vetrinarian could not give us a time frame, nor could he speculate on how much pain he would actually have. Fast forward six or seven weeks to the end of April. We came home to find Simon laying on the kitchen floor. He could not get up to go outside - he could not even wag his tail. He had not eaten in over a week, but did not look emaciated. In fact, he looked bloated. I could tell something was very wrong and we brought him into the afterhours clinic that night. They took one look at him and knew what we suspected. They withdrew fluid from his belly, only to find it full of blood. We had to make the heart-wrenching decision to put him down that night. Without an autopsy, it was difficult to speculate, but the vet thinks that he contracted cancer of the spleen and that during the day, his spleen had ruptured. He indicated that it was a wise choice to bring him in, as we may have likely discovered him gone in the morning.

I cried for a week after he was gone. It was a very difficult choice for us, but one that was necessary to give him the peace that he so rightly deserved. He was a beautiful, gentle dog and may he be very content, in Heaven, at my mother's side - with her most likely feeding him treats all day!!