living dreams

The Great Pumpkin Day.

Charles Schultz sure made an impression on me with the Great Pumpkin, I think about those stories I read about Charlie Brown and Linus and the gang every Halloween.

It was a great night for trick or treating, no rain - the kids had so much fun. It was a packed day with a parade at Em's school, a party at Cam's daycare and then the church fall festival.

I have lots of pictures. Some good, some bad - glad I have them all.

I dropped my camera on the road today. Yes. My heart lept out of my mouth but thankfully the only damage was some scrapes on the hood cover and a little scrape on the body. Everything else works so far, so I hope nothing goes wrong with it. Yikes.

Lots of pics and stuff to share but will share next week. Still have lots to do before heading out the door tomorrow for CKC and for a weekend getaway with the FontWerks girls. Can't wait! So I won't be posting until after the weekend.

Hopefully next week I will share some news about some new classes coming to you over there in Asia...

Have a great weekend!

A little victory.

Finding a patch of sunlight in the midst of the "pre-historic forest" at Laity Pumpkin Patch, and actually SEEING the sun flare in my lens before snapping the picture. I actually stopped for a moment and just admired it through the lens before taking the picture, lol!!

I was fiddling with the camera and settings - it was a crazy kind of day with lots of sun on one side and it was overcast on another, and there were trees right above me, but look - I caught the flare.

Woohoo! Now this is fun. If you've gone out to catch a sunflare recently, link me to your pic will you? I'll celebrate along with you!

And isn't this what life, scrapbooking, photography, _____ (insert your own list in here) should be all about? Learning, trying, testing, finding, celebrating, sharing, enjoying.

Yes! Yes! Yes, a thousand times, yes!

Lady of leisure.

Some days, I fantasize that after dropping the kids off to school, I get to go spend hours upon hours living up the good life. You know, the kind where you meet up with fellow-living-up-the-good-life friends, going shopping, eating, laughing, and well, living up the good life.

The kind where you flash all sorts of $ around, the credit cards are endless, and you drive a BMW.

LOL!! Yes, that's a fantasy I have sometimes. Do you have crazy thoughts like that sometimes?!

I don't think it's bad to have fantasies (and lots of them). I think it's fun, and a good use of my imagination. It makes me laugh out loud sometimes when those thoughts come to mind while I'm knee deep in boxes.

I have to say though. I'd rather be swamped in boxes and working for myself than not.

Fantasies aside, my reality is that I get to live my dream. That pretty much rocks, I think.

Off to work!

Time.

Saturday was all about family time. We decided to hit the pumpkin patch despite the rain, and what do you know, the farm was closed because of flooding. We had BC Rain to thank for that. So we decided to just wing it, and drove around looking for the salmon run out in Maple Ridge. We hit a salmon fence but didn't see a thing. The river was running fast and it was pretty silty looking. I thought I'd post a couple pics of Cameron to even out the last 2 Emily-heavy posts. :)

Right next to the salmon fence is this old dilapidated farm with yummy peeling paint - wish it hadn't been so muddy otherwise I'd have gotten the kids to go right up to the barn for some photos. But Cam indulged me by going as close as possible to the fence.

and on the edge of the farm there was a bunch of flowers growing. I loved the mix of flowers, grey skies and farm equipment.

Since we didn't see any salmon out at Maple Ridge, we headed to Coquitlam to our old standby, Hoy Creek, where there in fact we did see quite a number of big salmon heading to spawn. The kids were squealing,"oh Daddy! See! There's one! And another!" - really happy sounds to me.

And Em was happy, for sure.

After a rainy-soaked day, we headed to our friends Mark and Caryn's for their son Braeden's first birthday - good times of good food and friends.

It was a good Saturday.

I've run out of excuses.

There's been an elliptical machine sitting in my garage for a while now, and I've always told Rob that once I get a TV in the garage I'd be more than willing to park my *ahem* err.. feet.. on the machine, and start exercising. Never mind that nowadays you can get a TV for dirt cheap. It was my last hold out, you know?

Don't know why I was holding out. I used to love going to the gym at 5.30am - I totally felt like in that one hour of working out, I got my workout, my morning news, and my burst of energy for the day. Ever since Rob's started his shift work all that's gone down the drain as I was not able to get to the gym, hence us buying the elliptical.

But day after day, month after month, I am still sitting sedentary at this computer. My workouts are limited to packing boxes and running after the children. And, well, the muffintop's totally overflowing. You know how when you pile too much batter into a cookie pan and it oozes from the top over to the edges? Now you've got a visual of my waist. Yes. It's not pretty.

So. Back to the current story - we bought a huge TV off my parents' neighbours for $50 - and that included a DVD player and a karaoke mike  that they threw in. The TV is now in the garage. So technically, I could be exercising while watching TV or a DVD and singing karaoke. None of which I am doing.

Rob just told me a few minutes ago,"well, you're out of excuses."

Yikes.

er, I mean, "hurray!"

Forgive me for this bad photo, Em...

... but it was your first time playing the piano (an awesome rendition of Yankee Doodle) for the entire school, and your mom here was a little overwhelmed with pride.

Not to mention that there were only 3 other parents in attendance (Daddy included), and I was the only one with the obnoxious camera trying to get closer to the front so I could get a decent shot.

Let me tell you, Em - for someone who has never had piano lessons, you simply rock at piano. The fact that you've self-taught yourself all the songs you know just simply blows me away. You have a gift for music, and I better get you enrolled in some classes. I know, we've talked about it so much, and we've still not done it. Better get on it, eh?

You did good, Emmie girl. I'm so proud of you. And I love that you've told me you hope to get to do it again.

Go, Em!

Canada's Crops for Kids (also titled:Emily rocks).

Saturday was a blast - spent all day at the Canada's Crops for Kids-Vancouver edition, with my girl Emily. We'd planned to make it a girls' day out, and thankfully as my folks offered to watch Cameron we could stay as long as we wanted. (Thank you, Pa and Mom. And if anyone is interested as to what they did with Cameron, they went to see the salmon run. My parents are awesome like that).

Em and I started the day off taking a class with Joanna - Em stamped and cut and pasted her way through this fun and relaxed class and even managed to create another layout on her own. After lunch, she was my TA along with my official TA (hi Joanne!) for my 2 classes which sold out thanks to all of you who signed up!! Em and I created some personalized magnets for the ladies who took my classes...

and she was a whiz at giving out prizes (which will come into play again in a minute)...

we also sat in on Rachel's photography class which was awesome as I got to practice with really, really low light and I was quite happy with the pictures that I got - all in manual setting, and with no flash. Go me.

... a masterpiece by Em created during Rachel's lecture... I love what she wrote.

and since Heather posted a picture of me on her blog, here's one I took of her...

Em sure took to a number of ladies at the event - and I am so thankful that they were so kind and gracious to her, spending tons of time talking, chatting and playing with her. On our way home, she said,"Mom, I had fun with your friends. And they're now my friends." Awww.

This one is a favorite from the day, of Em just hanging out with Cate. I'm amazed at the light I caught as it really was a dark room.

Another of Em's conquests of the night - Miss Shannon. Thanks for all you did with Em, Shannon.

A terrible photo of a wonderful thing - a cheque presentation from Shopper's Drug mart for over $31,000 to the hospital. So awesome.

I had to run to capture this photo as Em, being the social butterfly she was, was all over the place. You cannot imagine how seeing her in action thrills my heart.

As you can see, Em's got natural paparrazzi tendencies.

(As I took this photo, my heart leapt into my throat as I whispered, "oh, don't drop that camera, Em.."

she didn't, and her very willing and enthusiastic model Cate, was awesome.

... and by the end of the night, Ms Social Butterfly had found her way to the podium, calling out names for doorprizes. She never ceases to amaze me.

Thank you, CSC4K for a great weekend. To Joanna and Heather, for the great class. To everyone who attended my classes - (oh, and special hugs for baby Jacob), and to Cate, Shannon, Nicole and Mary, for spending time with Em, to Rachel for the great photo class, to Tara and Sandra and everyone else who we chatted with - thanks for making this a great girls' day out for Em and I.

Can't wait to hear what CSC4K raised for the hospitals.

(PS-all the pics were taken at ISO 1600 with a 50mm lens - no corrections or actions on them yet).

Finally back.

So the system being down turned out to be a complete system crash. Had to call in the techies and get new computers and hardware and software so now we have gleaming new everything, and it's taking me a while to get used to all the new 2007 editions of Excel and Outlook and whatnots. Good news is we managed to save everything except for 30% of a specific drive, hopefully there was nothing too important on that drive.

Had to sit and wade through 27,000 emails (yes - that is twenty seven THOUSAND) - that were cached and saved - hopefully again we saved all the ones we needed and I'm hoping I didn't delete important ones in error. Let me tell you, it's no fun wading through all that spam emails in between wholesale requests and others. The inbox is down to about 900 right now - so it will be another 1-2 hours of working on those emails.

Anyway - that was my week. LOL. Tomorrow is Crops for Kids - taking place all over Canada. So cool to see it happening. Looking forward to teaching my 2 classes and taking a class from Joanna Bolick. Hoping to have time to take some photos as I practice my photography as well.

Back to work for me - have a good day!

Technology is winning today.

The computer systems here at FontWerks are currently down - so we have no access to our saved emails, accounts, faxes, etc etc. The tech guy is coming tomorrow so it's a forced day of no work for us today. Well, no work as in work we usually do on the computers. Today we're basically forced to do the labor work such as cutting, packing, moving the stuff and getting rid of boxes, so our shelves should be stocked well tomorrow. Kind of scary to think that technology controls so much of our lives that a simple down time makes us have to scratch our heads and think, "ok, now what?"

We have new computers waiting for hookup once we figure out what the heck is causing this mess. I'm really struggling with the tech issues we've had - I'm so aware we need to switch over to Macs and have all our network / virus / graphics issues all solved in one fell swoop. Anyone have a few thousand dollars to hook me up with a brand new system? Haha.

Well - not much I can do today besides the manual stuff - so off I go. If you're calling us today, we'll try to help or answer your question as best as we can without access to our system - but hopefully we should be back up by Wednesday.

Oh, PS - in case you're wondering how I'm up on Typepad, I'm on the laptop and I can access the net - just not our system.

well, i showed her. i think.

Emily and I were at the fabric store yesterday buying some fabric trims for class kits - and while we were waiting at the counter line up, the women ahead and behind us started to chat with Em over her Healy's - her huge, purple rolling-heels type shoes. Which is pretty common (strangers chatting to the kids in line ups.. and I guess the shoes are too), but then one of the women asked Em what she was going to be for Halloween.

"I dunno," Emily said.

"What?! You don't know what you're going to be yet?"

And then she gave me this look. The look that said,"what kind of mother are you?!"

And I meekly said,"uh, yeah, I'm a little behind this year."

When really in my mind I was saying,"it's only early October!"

But then I remembered the panic of last year when we ran down the almost-empty store aisles looking for costumes for the kids.

So today, off we went, and scored some pretty cool costumes, I think. We now have Cinderella and Spiderman living in our house.

I'm thinking I need to go back to that fabric store and tell that woman that the kids now know what they'll be for Halloween. What kills me is that being in a fabric store, she probably assumed I was going to sew those costumes. HA!!!! Or should I say, hahahahah!!!

At least I won't be running down the aisles the day before Halloween looking for costumes this year!

And this is Thanksgiving weekend for us here in Canada. This is the first time in 4 years I will get to sit down and eat turkey with my family for Thanksgiving - I have been away every year - and I was ALMOST away this year too, as MG was tempting me with a Thelma and Louise getaway to England this weekend... anyway, you don't know how happy I am to be able to spend this time with the family. And to eat turkey. And my mom's turkey porridge the next day. Oy. Better go find those loose sweatpants.

We'll be closed on Monday and back on Tuesday. I'll be showing off some of our new Fall/Winter designs this coming week!

Happy Thanksgiving! (and Happy Columbus day to my American friends!)