Dean's Birthday

At the stroke of Midnight, Maddie was running upstairs present in hand and singing Happy Birthday to Dean. He opened his gifts....

played with them.....


and went to bed to rest for cake breakfast!

Then we went to Cochrane for icecream lunch...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAN!

Suzy Homemaker

When Maddie was in Winnipeg a few years ago she bought an easy bake oven at a garage sale for 3 bucks. It sat around n the garage, and then recently moved into the house. I don't even know if Maddie ever even plugged it in before? But she tried and it still works. We googled the model and it's from 1968!!! Martina was coming over for a sleepover, so we went and bought some easy bake oven cake mixes, and the girls made their own cookies and cakes. I can't believe it still works!! And it works well! They built them tough back then!

Maddie's own camera

Maddie's grad dress.

Photoshoot @ home.

We did get a few pictures of grad thanx to Maddie's camera. She ran around and got pix of as many freinds as she could find. Here'a a few.

Addy and Maddie

Maddie and Michael

Maddie and Jenn

Maddie, Alma, and Jenn

Grad 2009 Blur

Maddie's grade 9 Grad picture. Does it look fuzzy to you? Click on it to make it bigger, go ahead I dare you.... still fuzzy.... huh, funny story!! The photographer hired for the day, to take the pictures of the all the kids dressed up, on their grad day, boys in suits, girls in their expensive cute little dresses, hairdresser hair, all this was to be captured on film, or digital or whatever the form, but..... big BUT, this photographer.... forgot how to work a camera.... so there are NO grad pictures!! This was taken by a parent, on her cell phone... and it's the only picture available of this memorable day!!! P.S. there are kids in the right hand side out of the camera angle also... Maddie's best freind Jen being one of them. :-( What a sham.... and a shame that this guy ruined the grade nine grad pic.
P.S.S. Maddie is 2nd on the left, front row. You would never be able to pick her out!

End of a Thriller Icon

Well the buzz around town is the the Pop Star we all grew up with has passed away at the age of 50. When I was a kid I played my Thriller album so often I wore it out, and had to buy another one. Michael Jackson had a long career, an even longer list of songs and he will be missed, weirdness aside, the man knew how to entertain!

Funny Moments In Traffic.

I spend a lot of time in traffic. 99.5 percent of the time it is pretty uneventful. Cars pass me. I pass other cars. That's about it. So it is always interesting when you see the cops jump into action.

Today I was on my way to an office and suddenly two policeman jump into the middle of the intersection and stop traffic. What's going on? A police chase?
An accident? What could it be? Was U2 filming their latest vid right here?



Well, it turned out to be about a 1 km line of school children crossing the street. What a let down! There were hundreds of them and we were held up for about 10 minutes while all of them crossed the street on their way to Cardel.

Not extremely exciting but pretty funny.

The Poll Is Back!

We haven't had a poll on the blog since the wedding, and we thot it was time to play again!

We want you to vote on some pictures. We want to know what your favourite one is. Selena picked three and I picked three. It was a reaaaaaally hard decision! Which pic will be crowned the winner? ( Titles are in red ) Don't forget to click them to see them LARGE.

Here are my three favourite pics:

I just love this photo. The colour of the
car was really captured here almost making
the photo appear black and white and the colour
of the car added afterword. And I love how
the "wineglass" was gently placed in this
very spot for us to photograph.

From the floor of the Lincoln Memorial of the "Washington
Monument". I wish I had come a little closer to get a little
less floor.

And you know why I LOVE this photo! My brand new
"beautiful wife" after she took a dip in the pacific ocean.

I wasn't going to pick Maddie and "Larry", because I see it everyday, but I am supposed to pick my favorites, and this is one of them. Plus, when I look at this picture I can't help but smile :-)

I know, I know, predictable... but I really do Love this picture! How can "severed parts" not be kewl??

And I think this is my ultimate fave! Hey it's a "big CAT"! another no brainer for me..hehehe. I love, love, love the colors in this pic!

Live long and Prosper

For our little day trip this weekend we ventured to Vulcan. Now I know Vulcan is a small town, and I know there isn't allot to do there, but after seeing the new Star Trek Movie we thought we'd go check it out. About 10 years ago, me Claudia and the girls would go into Vulcan and shop at the used book store, and a consignment store that was there. That's all I remember for the shopping side of the town, but it was fun to see Spock ears for sale in the grocery market, and every store for that matter.

So never having seen the "new" tourist information booth shaped like a Trek Station, we headed south to see it.

The Trek station is quite cool, you can have your pic taken for free with any cardboard cutout from the Star Treks. There are some really nice T-shirts and souvenirs, even from the new movie. But then when you hit the streets of Vulcan..... Everything is closed. And this is on a Saturday. The hours are Mon - Frid. We missed the Star Trek convention by one weekend, there were 5000 tourists in a town of a population of 2000. What did they do when they were here??? Maybe everyone was tired so they decided not to open this weekend. We did find Subway open tho' had our lunch and went on our merry way back to Calgary.

Well, it's not everyday you get to wear Vulcan ears tho' so the day wasn't a total loss :-)

CSI: Los Angeles

Selena and I love all the CSI shows (except Miami but that's another blogpost) and we are going through a little bit of withdrawl during the summer months as we have to wait until fall for the new episodes to watch. But wait!

Courtesy of the Los Angeles Times, a very real CSI episode played out in the LAPD last week.

The Times reports:

Shortly after she sat down at her desk on the third floor of LAPD headquarters Friday morning, Det. Stephanie Lazarus was told a suspect in the basement jail had information on one of her cases. The 25-year police veteran went quickly downstairs.

As Lazarus removed her firearm to pass through security, she unknowingly walked into a trap. There was no suspect -- only questions about a terrible secret police believe she has been harboring for more than two decades.

The article explains that murders in LA are at historic lows and the detectives have had time to go back through cold cases. In 1986, a nurse was murdered. Detectives had been searching for two male victims that had committed some crimes right around the same time as the nurse was murdered. DNA samples from the case were tested recently and revealed that the probable murderer was a woman. Lazarus had contact with the victim and was promoted to the prime suspect in the case. Only a few people in the LAPD knew about the investigation as they did not want to tip Lazarus off that she was a suspect. She was followed by other detectives for a period of time in order to collect a DNA sample. They got a sample compared it to the one left at the murder scene and it matched.

Here's the link to the article:

http://www.latimes.com/la-me-detective-arrested6-2009jun06,0,6286885.story

It is quite the amazing story. It was also cool that she was caught with many of the police techniques that we watch on CSI. I have a feeling that we might see this real life story show up in a story line in the upcoming season.