It's been a while!!!

So it's been some time since our last blog entry. Sorry. We've been really busy lately and haven't had much free time. Let me fill you in on the haps. Two weekends ago we got our first couple of new baby accessories. The first one being a new jogging stroller for Mom and the baby(Dad probably won't get too much use out of it). Elizabeth looked at a few and didn't like this or that with all of them. The one we found has everything she could ever hope for and more, her life is complete now.

As you can see if our baby looks anything like a basketball it will be a perfect fit.

The next thing we got was not bought by us, oh no, it was a gift from our friends Ry_n and El_sa. It's a great gift and we are very blessed to have such great friends. It's a motorized swing set for our little one. It has multiple speeds, has several calming nature sounds and plays some sort of kiddie music.

This is really a mixed blog entry. The next portion will reflect our last weekend in Vancouver. We went to Vancouver on a whim, just expecting to have a good time with our friends R&E. when we got off the ferry we saw more friends Rayeal Michalski and Kim Richmond. After chatting for a while we went to Brad and Kim,s place to hang out. We stayed there until about 1am then cruised back to R&E's to retire for the evening. Next day was ABC for breakfast and shopping for new clothes. Elisa and Michelle(Lindoff) had tickets for the Mariah Carey concert that night, which they purchased month's ago. Elizabeth was in search of something to do that night because it would mean hanging with the boys otherwise. We thought why not see if there were anymore tickets to the concert. We found the last ticket in the section the other girls were in and bought it. $101 dollars later the girls were together watching one of the all time greatest divas ever. I though that was pretty cool, and I apologize for using the word "diva". Anyways I've bored myself with typing so now I will bid you all farewell. Elizabeth's feeling well and strong, the baby is healthy and normal, and I am me. Life is good. 68 days and counting until little Mohammed or Latisha comes into our lives.

Our last holliday without Jr.

Well this trip to California was just what we needed. We got lots of sun and heat, the temperatures hovered around 35-37degrees. We did lots of stuff and we still had lots of time to relax, which was what it was all about. So the first day we got there we got our rental car which was a Chrysler 300. This car is big, wide and sucks gas big time. We loved it.
Our first day we went to Newport beach, our favorite beach. We spent the afternoon soaking up the sun and just relaxing from the flight.
After the beach we checked into our hotel which was a pleasant surpirise. The hotel was nothing special, it was a Holliday Inn near Disneyland. The great thing about it was that it was really clean and the service was awsome. That night we headed off to Downtown Disney which is a bunch of Restaurants, shops and entertainment. We ate at a Mexican place called Tortilla Joes, it was a good spot to people watch. The next day we went to San Diego via the coast highway. The drive down presented many nice beaches one of our favorites was in San Capistrano.
I'm gonna speed things up a bit by point forming the rest of the trip. In San Diego we spent much time lost trying to find the Wild Animal Park, who knew 30 miles south of the park would be Mexico?? That day was cool but really hot!! 37 degrees hot. The park was really interesting. The next day we went to Disneyland/California Adventure all in one day. We weren't going to go there but how could we pass up the 50th anniversary, Mickey just wouldn't have it. Dinner that night we stuffed our faces full of Red Lobster goodness and sat by the pool. The next day was Santa Monica and the BLVD for some window shopping. We sat on the beach and checked out the pier. Dinner was Olive Garden, enough said. After dinner we cruised back to Anaheim to catch an Angels game that was sold out except for our $120 tickets we barley got the morning of. The game was awsome. There was a collision at the plate, extra innings and Anaheim won by a homerun in the 10th inning, sweet!! The next day was spent with room service breakfast and siiting pool side until we had to pack up and go home. The trip was good maybe 2 days too short but good non the less.

California and New wheels!?!?

So tonight we head off for the sun soaked beaches of California. This is probably our favorite place to travel to(mine anyways). I know it's not very exotic but that's me. We're just heading down for the long weekend plus 2 days. It'll just give us enough time to get some more 30 degree weather in and see some of our favorite spots. I'll for sure have some pictures to show, but now that I'm a big wedding photographer I don't know how these travel pictures will turn out, it's not my specialty you know.
On another note, I've been selling stuff on usedvictoria.com at a pretty good pace. I put 3 things on(xbox,computer,TV)and they all sold within days.The TV I will have for a little while because I sold it to a friend. Anyways yesterday I decided to try my luck at the buying thing and picked up a set of wheels and tires for the Honda. They were pretty cheap and it kind of shows but for the cost of what I sold my xbox for, it's a good trade off. They are really dirty and need to be shinned up but they should be ok.

Beth's beautiful bountiful baby belly!!!

the tummy is progressing lovely. Notice the shirt says"COMING THIS FALL". these are Elizabeth's first maternity clothes from Old Navy.

More Mayne Island PIcs

My Island Adventures

This thusday and friday for me(Brian) were spent ferry hoping between Victoria/Saturna/Saltspring and Mayne Island. I don't mind these days because it usually means 2hrs work for a 10hr day. Thursday was Saltspring island which I had been to a couple times before, once last week actually. It was nothing out of the ordinary and was a gorgeous day to travel. After my job I stopped for lunch at this restuarant/cafe on the water that I always go to over there. The good thing about these jobs on the island is that the ferries are few and far between so I have a chance to look around and take some pictures.
Friday was Mayne island, never been didn't really care to ever go. I had to be on the 5am ferry over which meant I was up at 4am to get out there in time. I actually love beeing up really eary like that when it's quiet and dark. Anyways I got on the ferry and got over there not knowing what to expect, but it was a pleasant surprise. I found all kinds of neat places, and a beach that was really nice. I'm over my writing quota so here are some pictures.
This was on the way to Saltspring Thursday, I love the rays of light coming through the clouds.
This was on the ferry to Mayne island. The colour of the sunrise turned everything orange, the boat, the water and the trees on the shore.
Some old tractor sitting outside and old farm house. It kind of shows the lifestyle of the poeple on the island. I went to a little bakery that was serving breakfast after my job and it showed me that poeple like living in their simple small town ways. I ordered my omlette and coffee got out my debit card, "sorry we don't have debit". The lady said "you can eat your breakfast and the go down the road to the atm and pay after"!!!!!!! that would never happen in Victoria at a place you've never been. When I got my coffee, I just grabbed a big old mug out of the cupboard and poured it myself. Long story short it was kinda cool.

Some wedding sampler photos

New Toys

So I got a couple of new toys for my camera this week. One of them is a 3x telephoto lens for the end of my camera. The other is a 0.38xultra wide angle lens with macro. I tried out the macro lens and ended up with some cool close ups . Obvoiusly i'll put a couple pictures to show you all. They may bore you or not but there going on anyways.

Baby update sort of!!!

So Elizabeth is in her 24th week and is starting to grow finally. It seems like she will grow a lot in the next few weeks and months so maybe we'll update with belly pictures as we go now. We are still so excited and now we just want the kid to be born to see what it looks like and how it behaves.
This week we also booked our last trip to California as "DINK's"( Dual income no kids) We will be going down Sept 2 to soak up the sun and just relax. We plan to head down to San Diego because we've never been yet. We'll take in a baseball game and check out some other sites down there. We are also going to go to our favorite beach Santa Monica. This year is going to be a lot more relaxed than previous trips, we aren't hitting all the theme parks this time. I hope to take a bunch of pictures down there so you can be sure you'll be seeing them on the blog.
This coming Saturday is Rebekah and Gavin's wedding in which I will be the official photographer, Pardon me while I throw up....... I'll be honest I am getting nervous because it is such a big thing and I have never done a wedding before. Oh well there's a first for everything!!??!!?? Here's a couple of pictures to satisfy your viewing pleasures.
Here is litlle Elizabeth at 6 month's pregnant. She doesn't look huge yet by any stretch of the imagination, but soon....
I have been getiing up at 5:30am a couple days a week and going to get some early morning shots when the lighting is good. This one is on the breakwater all by myself around 5:45am last week. Elizabeth really likes it and said I should put it on the blog site so here it is.

More Pics

Sproat lake pictures

This site is acting stupid so I'll have to put more pictures up later.

Sproat Lake long weekend

This past weekend was a weekend we look forward to every year. Once a year we get the chance to use Elisa's parents place on sproat lake, past Port Alberni. It's such a great place up there with every summer experience you can think of. It has camping(if you consider a fully functional RV with kitchen bathroom and cable TV camping)a fire pit, a gorgeous lake, and a boat to take full advantage of the large lake. We went on Saturday afternoon, picked up Ryan and Elisa on the way through Ladysmith and arrived around 2:00 in Port Alberni. We loaded up on food and goodies,, and got there just in time for dinner. That night we took a spin on the boat and just relaxed around the fire. Sunday we got up and made bacon,eggs,maple sausages,and toast before we got going on our big day. I'll just add that the weather was hovering around 28 degrees the whole weekend so we got a lot of sun. So Sunday morning Ryan and I went to put gas in the boat before we headed out. As we were at the gas pump I leaned over to pick up the spare gas tank and heard a "clink" sound on the dock, I bent down and saw that the water was rippled around where I was standing. I reached my hand in my pouch pocket and realised something was missing, that something was my keys which had the car/house/van and various other work related keys on it. So my keys just sank to the bottom of the lake which was pretty bad because I didn't have spares for some of them. After we filled up the boat we headed back to get the girls. We needed to get something out of the car so I asked Elizabeth for her keys as mine were 30ft deep in the lake. We looked around and couldn't find them anywhere, we ripped apart the trailer,garbage,clothes and anything else we could find, nothing! We finally went and looked in the car and there they were in the back seat, all the doors locked every window up.
To make a long story sort of short I used a trusty coat hanger and jimmy'd the door open.
Anyways we got away and did some boating some swimming and some sunbathing, it was a good day. We then went to a restaurant called "Aquadisiac", there's a long story of how crappy that place was so I won't go in to it. I will say that we had alligator that night which was good until we got the bill. Monday we went to Coombs on the way back and saw the goats on the roof and then had a swim at Elisa's parents pool. It was a great weekend and we created lots of great memories!!!!!!!!!!!!!pictures to come!

Teen Camp 2006

Another year of helping at Nanoose Bay has come and gone but not without some more great memories. I was helping doing sports staff again which I really like, for the most part. Elizabeth was up for a couple days at the beginning and a couple at the end, hopefully next year she can be there the whole time. There were about 280 teens at the camp plus all the staff to run it, which is pretty normal numbers for Nanoose. The first few days were o.k. weather wise but the last 2 or 3 days were up around 34-35 degrees. This year was a little different for me because one of the sports staff members who takes all the pictures for the camp sports and awards became ill. Due to his illness I stepped in to take the pictures for 2 days of sports as well as all the banquet and awards pictures. I got to use probably 7000-8000 dollars of camera equipment for those few days which made me almost giddy. All in all it was a great camp with lots of laughs and lots of fun, I wouldn't want to spend 1 week of my holidays any other way. I have around 450 pictures of camp but I'll only put a few on the blog.
The great and mighty sports staff Me taking some pics and getting some sun while I'm at it.
Elizabeth getting a picture from one of the many awards she won in the past, this one was mvp.
This is me at the awards banquet, it's quite the event. It even has paparazzi and reporters.

The big day!! First Baby pics!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Today was the biggest baby day since we found out Elizabeth was pregnant, ultrasound day!!!! This morning at 10:00 was exciting, we got to see our first pictures of the baby. We got to see about 45min of the baby moving around and got 8 pictures of the baby to take home. It was so neat to see little ______ laying there and adjusting his/her body in different ways. The baby moved a lot more than we thought, Elizabeth couldn't feel it move at all. We Didn't find out what the sex was, even with mild pressure on my part to know if it was a Boy or a girl. Either way I'm cool with it. We have a couple of good pictures so hopefully you can make out the shapes.

Picture 3 clearly shows that we have a classic case of thumbsuckingalatosis.

Picture 4 shows how flexible the baby is obviously taking after his/her father.

Day 3 kayaking and more sun

On our last day of this long weekend we we're going to rent jet skis and tear up the lake but it didn't work out, oh well. Instead we rented a kayak and cruised on Elk Lake for the afternoon. We thought it would have been easier than it was, so I think our arms will be hurting tomorrow. It was a nice change from the ordinary, I do still want to rent something with a little more power this summer. This was a great summer weekend with nice weather, sun, and a whole lot of fun.