Christmas Day, 2007

Lori and I had a most enjoyable Christmas Day dinner with Colin, Lynda, Martin and Alison at the Waring House Inn, (which also has a winery and Cookery school). The Inn is located near Picton, just south of Belleville, about 3 hours from our cottage.

After dinner, Colin, Martin and Lori played their guitars and gave us a most enjoyable concert of Christmas and folk music.

Today, Boxing Day, we crossed the border at about noon, and have made it as far as Wilkes-Barre in Pennsylvania, where we are staying at a nice Hilton Garden Inn.

The last week or so has been hectic with all the packing, moving and unpacking for our move from Ottawa, and then packing again for 4 months away in Florida. If our car had gills, it would certainly be packed right up to them.

My next post will be after we arrive in Florida and get (hopefully soon after that) high speed Internet access.

Best wishes to all our family for the New Year, and now that I am retired, we hope to see more of you all in this coming year.

5 Days to Go

And I am so looking forward to my "retirement". This will allow me more time to travel, visit my family and do more project management training.

I also am in discussions with an ex colleague to do some consulting in the New York area in January, which I am excited about. It will involve helping them to develop their project management methodology, Program Management Office and project management training, all up my street.

Finally, some more seasonal pictures from the family archives . . .

!4 Days to Go

Like Cher, I am ready for my second retirement, with maybe a few more to go after this.

After almost three years, I am ending my current contract on Dec 14th, which means there are only 14 more working days left. It has been a good assignment, and Lori and I have enjoyed Ottawa, but I want to retire while I am still healthy and able to travel and visit our family scattered around North America.

I am also planning another project management course which I think will be in higher demand than my current course. It will be on "Why Projects Fail" and based on the feedback I get from my courses, almost every project seems to be having problems. I have developed a neat Project Health Check" tool to diagnose the problem areas in a project that I think will fit well in the course.

So I will not be in full retirement mode, but Lori and I will still be able to travel and spend our winters in Florida or some other sunny location, go on cruises in Europe and visit friends in New Zealand and England.

I have no pictures to go with this post, so will include this one of a very cute little boy and his even cuter big sister. No prizes for guessing who they are.

And in case my little brother gets jealous, I am including a cute prized photo of him also. Who knew that England had its own Wild West (Bristol)!

Baby Pictures - Round 1

Whilst others may exploit their children for blog material, like some cartoonists (For Better or Worse, so to speak), I have always resisted the temptation to sink to such low depths. However, after going over two miserable weeks with no news to post, I am embarrassed to say that I have finally succumbed and am posting some baby pictures.

To protect the innocent, I will not put names to them, but Lori has provided the captions and you know who you are (as probably also do those closest to you).

Trick or Treat

One Foot Out

Togetherness

I Love Pasketti

I Love Pasketti Too

As you can guess from the title of this post, there are plenty more cute baby pictures where these came from, so you have been warned.

Dinner with Martin

This evening Lori and I met up with Martin, who is spending a couple of days in Ottawa. We went to a really nice French restaurant for dinner near our condo, called Le Panache. Afterwards we went back to the condo and Martin showed us pictures from his trip to New Zealand.

He is an excellent photographer and his pictures of the flora and fauna and scenery of New Zealand were awesome. You can see these pictures on his blog (link added to the "Family Blogs" section).

Back to the Farm

I went back to the Ottawa Experimental Farm and Arboretum today, to see if I could see the lady painter with the bike again and give her an autographed copy of her photo, but she was not there - it was a bit cold to be painting. I also wanted to see the Photo Exhibition of Trees by Richard Hinchcliff that ended today. It must have taken a lot of skill, patience and perseverance to get such beautiful pictures.

I cannot hope to match his expertise, and the day was kind of dull and grey, but above are my attempts.

I am not Blogworthy

I have been accused by certain people (who shall be nameless, but she lives in Texas) that I do not post often enough.

Well, I wake up every day thinking, what can I do today that I can post on my blog, and without any kids of my own here, I do not have the juicy material and pictures afforded to others.

To paraphrase an old Seinfeld episode, I am not Blogworthy. However, I will do my best to post at least once every week, even if it is only a rant like this.

I do like to get all your news (L & Y), so keep up the good work.

Thanksgiving at The Old Schoolhouse

Lori and I celebrated Thanksgiving at The Old Schoolhuse, in Ormsby, about 45 km and an hour away from our cottage. The Old Schoolhouse was built in 1921 and was used till 1964.

I would love to read more about what it was like to teach (and be taught) in a one room Schoolhouse, so if any of you know of any good books on this subject (besides Lori's favourite, The Little House on the Prairie) please let me know.

We had the traditional turkey dinner, with all the trimmings, and Lori chose pumpkin pie and I had the carrot cake (of course).

September Birthday Celebrations for the Vancouver Clan

Back row: Avery, Cheryl, Charissa, Willie, Camille, Mum
Front row: Rob, Glenn, Bailey

My sister Camille sent me this great photo of her Vancouver Clan celebrating four September Birthdays - Charissa's (on the 7th), Mum (17th), Bailey (21st) and Willie (26th).

Missing from this photo by only a few days is Charissa's brand new addition to the Clan - Liam Russell Fergusson, born October 4th at 4:58 am (an early riser not like some of the Crawford clan), weighing in at 7lb 4oz. Congratulations to Charissa and Rob!!

Flying to Bancroft and Paudash Lake

I was staying behind in Ottawa to deliver my Project Management Workshop a couple of Saturdays ago, so my colleague Bob, who belongs to a flying club, offered to fly me back to Bancroft to see Lori the next day.

Lori met us at the Bancroft airport, and to my surprise took up Bob's offer to fly her around our cottage and lake. As you can see, she was not nervous at all . .

and once airborne, really enjoyed the flight . .

and seeing the lake and our cottage from the air.

This picture gives you a good view of the island that our cottage is on. As you can see, the island is connected by a small causeway to the mainland. Our cottage is where the "x" is.

Photoshop to the Rescue

I have never used Photoshop before for anything other than cropping photos, but thought the previous picture might benefit from a little "fixing" - what do you think of the result?

Now, if I can only figure out how to get these pictures in one post in the sequence I wanted, I will be all set.

Yvonne, Brian, Linda - Help!!

At The Pond

This would have been a good composition if only the woman in the background did not distract from the mother and son engrossed with the pond. I waited for her to move, but she too was engrossed with all the flowers. And I did not even notice that there were two more people lurking in the bushes till I got back home.

Painter at work

This lady was totally engrossed in her painting!

My Opening Post

Our two children and daughter-in-law all have blogs, and since we live in Canada and they are in the US, their blogs have been keeping us in touch with all their news. I thought I would start my own blog, to post any (usually) less exciting news and pictures that we parents/grandparents may have.

Today, I visited the Experimental Farm and Arboretum in Ottawa. I have been working in Ottawa now for almost three years and had also lived here for several years before this, but have never been to the Farm and Arboretum. I took a few pictures in the beautiful gardens there, which I am posting here, to see how this all works out.