A bit late, but congrats to my cousins who have had some new additions to the family.

First up- Jennie and Raymond had their first Dec 19th I believe- a baby GIRL named Allison.

Next, Robin and Jen had TWIN girls- Emma and Avery on Dec 29th- to go along with big sisters Caitlyn and Adria. Excellent job filling up all the seats in the mini-van.

And on Jan 1st, after 3 days of labour and a false start or two, weighing in at a solid 9lbs, 4oz- Jen and Alex Jago welcomed their BIG boy Patrick Jago into the family.

Congrats everyone! Time to update GENI

I dusted off the Canon recently (for Christmas) and started snapping a few shots.  When I was shooting with film/slides, I liked to have a roll of B&W handy for certain situations.  One nice thing about B&W is that you don’t have to care about AWB and I think B&W in certain shots just gives a different perspective or “feel” than the same shot in color.  Anyways, it’s a lot more convenient to hit a few buttons and select “monochrome” than carry two types of film or a second camera body dedicated for B&W.  For this shot, I quite by accident blurred out the Christmas tree lights in the background, but I think it adds a nice background for the shot.

For this shot of Sammo, I messed up on the AWB, but I kinda like the off tint… and this was the start of his bath so the rest of the shots would have been water spraying on the lens.

One day Erica comes home and while wearing socks, she does this sliding motion across the floor.  I ask her what is she doing, and she says “I’m skaping!”

Our friend Tony and his daugher Isabelle have been going to the local rink near our house so we decided to give it a try… for real.

Well the day we chose was the “Skate with Santa”- translation- the place is a zoo.  We managed to get E a rental (boy’s hockey skates) and got them on without too much drama.  The skates seem to fit, and standing the first time was like watching a newborn deer find its legs for the first time…

The ice opens, and we waddle on up to the rink.  When we got to the ice, E wouldn’t step on, and had to be encouraged.  I’m wondering, ok, how am I going to do this… and trying to think back to when I first learned to skate.

I bent over, took a wide stance, and held her under her armpits.  With her big helmet on, I couldn’t really see what her feet were doing, but we took it slow and tried to make our way over to the kid end of the ice.  As we make our way over,  I’m thinking ’she’s kinda heavy’ and I looked down at her feet… which were lifted off the ice and tucked under like a bird in flight. 

“Stand UP!” 

She makes a feeble attempt at standing… and at that point I knew I had to basically carry her, bent over double, to the other end of the ice… at a snails pace.

Once we got to the other end, my back was ready for shiatsu, and as we couldn’t get a metal stand to help her learn, it basically meant holding her up and trying to help her get her balance.  At that point, we’re told to get off as they needed to clean the ice. 

After a wait, we do the whole thing again, but this time someone saw that she was a total beginner and offered up their metal stand (yes there were kids who could skate just fine, but were using the stands for whatever reason). 

From that point on, it wasn’t bad.  She could stand and with Isabelle’s encouragement, get some forward progress.  It was funny to watch her try to “run” with skates on rather than angle the toe out and push off… and she fell down every 20 seconds… and for me it was like picking up a 30lb sack of potatoes every 20 seconds. 

Still, I think she had fun, and even got a helium balloon and candy cane from Santa out of the experience.