January 31, 2008, First Month Down

In honor of the first month of pictures finished, I'm posting two not-so-good pictures. The first is the condiment grouping on a table in the new restaurant SIL Greg introduced me to last night. I had never heard of WokBox before, but after my first experience there, I'm sure I'll be going again. Have to introduce Lloyd to it.

The second picture is three of the cards I made during my enforced snow day on Tuesday.

January 30 - Her Favorite Toy

His nephew gave this animated golf lamp to Lloyd for Christmas - press a button and the golfer swings, hits the ball which goes in the hole, and the crowd cheers. Sydney has loved it since she first saw it and every time she comes over she wants to play with it. She knows I'm taking her picture here so she's looking kind of self aware wondering if she's doing something wrong. Cute.

I'm feeling better today - It's still cold (has warmed up to -28) but I'm mobile - both vehicles are running. What a difference it makes to know that I can go out if I want.

January 29, Enough is Enough

I took this picture when the snow was still pretty. There's a lot more now and it's been -40 all day and will stay hovering around -30 for the rest of the week. Neither of my vehicles would start this morning so I had an enforced snow day - no hardship there - I don't mind staying home from work - but don't know what I'll do the rest of the week. Of course it's impossible to get through to the CAA to get help. One of my sons-in-law will try to help get at least one vehicle started tonight. Lloyd is on his way to Victoria and from his reports it's been a snowy trip. He won't fly so he's been driving. Sorry this is such a whining entry but I hate this cold weather when it lasts so long. Global warming - bah! humbug!

January 28 - Brrrrrrr!

We had a blizzard yesterday and are now in the midst of a week-long deep freeze. This shows the temperature outside my back door at 5:00 this afternoon...-27.8C...a little bit nippy! The official temperature in Edmonton today was -30C with a wind chill factor making it -48C. Arizona sure is sounding good these days!!! There were huge snow drifts on the roads this morning. I don't think I would have made it out to the main road without the 4-wheel drive.

January 27, 2008 - The Man

There were no grandchildren around for me to take pictures of today so this handsome fellow agreed to let me use him as my subject. This is Lloyd, the center of my life for almost 40 years now. I want to play around with the color picture and take all the color out except for the blue of his eyes. I was practicing with my new 50 mm lens, and with the b&w feature of my camera.

January 26, 2008

Amy pointed out to me that I have a couple pictures of Kenzie on this blog but none of Sydney and Aidan....so here they are. Sydney is two and a half and has a lovely bump/bruise above her left eye. Aidan is 6 months old and looks a lot like his big sister Kenzie. Eventually this blog will contain pictures of all of my grandchildren, interspersed with various and sundry other pictures. I got a 50 ml lens for my Canon Rebel today so will have fun playing with it.

January 25, 2008

This is a layout I've been working on today in response to a challenge on one of the scrapbook websites to do a layout with the focus on journalling. I've wanted to do one anyway about my namesake, Dad's mother, Millicent McCarthy. I like the way this turned out. It was nice to put my feelings about my name and memories of a wonderful woman into a layout. It's not so bad being named Millicent when I love the only other person with that name that I've ever met.

January 24, 2008

Baby Smiles. I was babysitting Eloise tonight for Sara. We had a good time together - for the first time she was smiling, talking and laughing for me. It's hard to capture it on camera though because when it's the big black box looking at her instead of a friendly face, her smile quickly fades. Eloise is my little namesake - her middle name is Patricia.

January 23, 2008

Kenzie loves my green microfibre throw - it's so smooth and soft on her skin. She loves to wrap up in it and get cozy. She has beautiful blue eyes, ringed with darker blue.

January 22, 2008

DD Sara did a photo shoot of Layla and Charlie the other day. They've been best friends since birth - at 4 and 3 years old, Charlie is 8 months older than Layla. And now Layla is moving away and the cousins are going to miss one another a lot. They've been the subject of Sara's seasonal photo shoots for three years.

January 21, 2008

I have to put two pictures in tonight. This first one is of my five daughters and one daughter-in-law. The second DIL lives too far away to be here. We had a girls night out because we don't know when we'll all be together again because of Mary moving to BC on Thursday. They are l-r, Cindy (DIL) holding Sara's baby Eloise, Amy, Sara, Jenny (nursing baby James), Emily and Mary.




The second picture is of Jenny's baby James (the youngest of Jenny's 5 boys). He was born prematurely on December 7. His due date was January 9, so although he is six weeks old, he's the size of a two-week old baby...strong and healthy. This was his first outing with the family.

January 20, 2008

I spent the day inside scrapbooking. This is one of the two layouts I completed - the first I've done of our grand-daughter Eloise Patricia Hardwicke-Brown who was born on November 27. It's much prettier and brighter in real life.

January 19, 2008

We went out to lunch today with Sara and Quincey and their kids Charlie, Max and Eloise. Max sat up on the windowsill of the restaurant and I took this picture of him. Although he was backlit from the outside, the picture turned out remarkably good, IMHO. Three year old Max is the only boy and middle child, flanked by a four-year old sister and 7-week old sister.... poor kid. He's a real sweetie.

July 18, 200

Somewhere along the way I've missed a day. This is my 17th day of entries, but the picture was taken today, January 18, and the snow on bushes page was taken on the 17th. Didn't take me long to goof up.

Anyway, this is Layla (3 yr. old granddaughter) in her car seat in the Swiss Chalet parking lot where we had just finished lunch with her Mother, Mary, and aunties Sara and Emily. Layla is moving to BC next week so I won't have many more chances to take pictures of her sweet self.

January 16, 2008

It started snowing around 4 this morning and didn't let up until suppertime. It was light, fluffy snow but the roads were messy with it. What can you expect in January in Edmonton???

January 12 (Out of Order)

Rob and Cindy hosted a farewell party for Mary and Greg. It was a lot of fun but we sure don't like to see them move away, especially now that Mary is pregnant. They have to live their lives though and take opportunities as they come. I made a scrapbook to present to them at the party. In looking through all my pictures, I realized we didn't have one of Lloyd and I with them since their wedding in 2000. So, in spite of bad lighting and shadows, we got Emily to take one of us. Greg's eyes aren't open so it's not a great picture of him, but it's good of Mary and Lloyd.

January 15, 2008

Mary relaxing in our funky new orange chair. Lloyd and I are really into retro and fell in love with this chair. Mary had to try it out when she came over. She and her husband, Greg, and daughter Layla, are moving to Osoyoos at the end of the month. We're going to miss them so much...and Mary is expecting their second baby in August. Looks like I'll be making a trip to BC this summer :)

January 14, 2008

Not the best picture of Eloise but the only one I got this evening when Lloyd and I were watching her and Charlie and Max while Sara drove Quincey to the airport. Elly is six weeks old now and is such a sweet little peanut. She still does most of her sleeping during the day, keeping Sara up late into the night. The kids love their little sister. Four-year old Charlie mothers her and takes her role of big sister very seriously. Three-year old Max is sometimes a little too enthusiastic in his hugs and kisses, but he loves her too.

January 13, 2008

I didn't take this picture, but I wanted to post it here in my picture-of-the-day blog anyway. This is one of the pictures taken by my daughter Sara for the engagement of my baby girl, Emily, and her fiance Allan. They're getting married on August 23 this year. Some of the 'old timers' at POTP may remember Emily from a couple years ago when she was living in Scotland and was an active participant in the Patch. She went by the username "Emtron". She and Allan have been together for 2 years now. She'll be 22 in May and he's a couple years older. He's our go-to guy for computer problems.

January 9 - 12, 2008

January 9, 2008

I hadn't done any pages on the scrapbook for Mary and Greg's farewell party on the 12th, so Emily came over to scrap with me and started me on a roll. By the 12th I had 18 pages done. In this picture, Emily is hard at work on one of the 3 layouts she completed that night.



January 10, 2008

Granddaughters Kenzie and Sydney came downstairs to visit me and wasted no time getting out the crayons and coloring books that I keep on hand for their visits.



January 11, 2008

Rob (DS#1) and Cindy had Anson's respite worker taking care of their kids this evening and needed to kill some time, so they came over and we had a nice game of Settlers of Catan. Rob won, but it was close. Fun.

The Next Few Days

January 5, 2008

Mum and I had fun trying to get some self-portraits of us together on her last day in Edmonton. She's 86 years old and has Alzheimer's so we don't know if we'll have another good Christmas with her. We take it one day at a time though. She thought I was foolish trying to take pictures of us myself. And then to put them on the computer !!! Technology baffles her.





January 6, 2008

Rob and Brooklyn had come to have dinner with us and Kenzie came down to play with Brooklyn. They both ended up playing with their Papa while he and Rob were watching the hockey game.













January 7, 2008.

I was working on a scrapbook for Mary and Greg and sorting through my stacks of pictures. Lloyd got interested in the pictures and spent quite a long time looking through them. He pretends not to be very interested in my scrapbooking, but always likes to see my pages when I'm done. I think it's the mess he doesn't like. He's promised to shave that beard by the end of February. I can hardly wait. It adds years to his handsome face.






January 8, 2008

I was baby-sitting for Kenzie this evening when I realized I hadn't taken my picture of the day. I have a feeling she'll be filling in for a lot of times when I forget. It's handy having her and her parents, brother and sister living upstairs...constant subjects for my camera. She liked our new orange leather retro chair.

The First Few Days

January 1, 2008.

This is my computer where I spend so much time, and the sexy pink leatherette notebook where I am going to document this picture-of-the-day project.






January 2, 2008.

First day back at work after the holidays. This is my desk and the other computer where I spend lots of time.







January 3, 2008.

Hockey night in Canada - Oilers hockey of course. They lost this game against Nashville but went on to a 4 game winning streak on home ice.


January 4, 2008.

My first trip of the year to my favorite scrapbook store. Mum was coming to the end of her two-week visit with us - she left the next day. Always ready for an afternoon outing, she humored me by accompanying me to the store. My Acura's back window really isn't solid blue.