Guys Weekend

This past weekend was a "Guys Weekend"...  no not that kind of Guys weekend, but it was more a Keir and Dad weekend.
Jen took Isla to her parents for the weekend and that meant that the boys had the rule of the house.  What does a "Guys Weekend" involve you ask? Well like I said above it wasn't a true "Guys weekend" with beer, wings, and chips. It was just a real nice weekend with my 7yr old son.
Keir had a birthday party on saturday morning but after that we went for a walk late in the afternoon on because Keir wanted to take some pictures.  Here are some the fruits of his labour:


Here is the photographer at work:




And I took a couple of photos as well

The Spoon:


After that it was super time, we decided to make our own pasta for supper, Keir documented the process
Starting:

Rolling it out


Finished product:

My supper (Keir's was a little different)

and finally Keir enjoying his supper and reading his Lego book at the supper table ... cause that is how we roll when there are no girls in the house ;)


It was great to have Keir all to myself for the weekend and I think Keir really enjoyed himself. Hopefully I can do this with Isla as well soon.
That is all for now
Take care
Ewan

Some Photos

The kids went out to shovel the driveway ( I didn't even ask them too, Keir seems to really like doing it) and i took some photos
Keir

Isla

Together

Cute kids!
Ewan

Leaves and RIP Mr. Caterpillar

It is officially fall here in our neck of the woods. And fall means a couple of things: apples, cooler temperatures, changing colours, and raking leaves. Today the kids "helped" rake up the leaves in our backyard. And by "help" I mean jump in the pile we had just raked!




and then throw the leaves everywhere


but really who can stay mad at such cute faces


While we were raking we uncovered a caterpillar, a woolly bear caterpillar to be precise (I never knew that is what they were called until tonight, another plus for the internet!). In the past Isla has been very infatuated with caterpillars (much to Jen's angst- she really doesn't like caterpillars!) and tonight was no different. She immediately stopped raking and proceeded to play with "Mr Caterpillar". Keir and I continued to rake when about 5 minutes had gone by and we heard Isla shreek! You see she had decided it would be a good idea to put a laundry peg on "Mr Caterpillar". Well you can sort of guess what happend next... Poor "Mr Caterpillar" came out on the loosing side of the encounter with the laundry peg. There was a little bit of caterpillar blood leaking out of Mr Caterpillar. Isla was beside herself, literally balling her eyes out. She was so sad and in between sobs she would ask if Mr Caterpillar was going to be ok.






Inspecting the damage:


The actual damage:


Mr Caterpillar wasn't actually dead, but I don't think he was feeling to well or was going to make it through the night. Here he is trying to flee the scene, the wet mark all around him is his blood:


All in all it was a pretty traumatizing experience for poor Isla (and I imagine for Mr Caterpillar as well).

RIP Mr Caterpillar!


Ewan

Thanksgiving 2010

So I have been a little quiet on the blog front but that is because of some little renovations going on in our house have been taking up our time. But more on the renovations later this week, for now I want to focus on is this past weekend, Thanksgiving Weekend.
We went out out to the Cottage for Sunday and Monday. It was a beautiful weekend weather wise which helped as the cottage doesn't have any heat! We had a great Thanksgiving meal on Sunday with Jen's parents, Grandmother, Aunt and Uncle. My parents also made the trip up to the cottage. The next morning we went for a walk at Foley Mountain Conservation Area which is in Westport. Westport is a cute little town on the Rideau Lake system, it is very busy with cottagers and tourists all summer long. Geographically it is right below the start of the Canadian Shield. The Canadian Shield is a massive geographic formation from a long, long time ago (see the link back there if you want to read more about it). Enough with the Geography lesson.... Foley Mountain is actually _on_ the Shield so you can get some pretty spectacular views from some of the trails.
An Example Spy Rock Lookout

It is huge drop off down to the Town of Westport, you can sort of see little Marina in Westport in the Picture
And if you look behind the people in this picture you can see the Town of Westport

Here is a pic of Keir trying to get a little to close to the edge of the lookout:

And of course once Ilsa saw Keir do that she wanted to get down to the edge as well

After spending some time at the lookout, we went for a walk on on of the many trails.

It was a really great morning in a really beautiful location!
Here are some more random photos from the weekend
Mr Frog at the cottage

Keir and Isla

Keir and Isla being silly

Boat at the Cottage


There is a whole bunch more photos here

That is all for now
Take care
Ewan

Photographer

During sunday afternoon we were getting supper ready and I had the camera out to document the whole deal. Keir decided that he was going to be a "photographer" for a little bit and here is some of his work


and lastly a self-portrait

Not bad for a 6 year old.

Ewan

Photos from our walk on Sunday

More Cool Pics

I am sure I have posted this site before but I will post it again The Big Picture from the Boston Globe. This one is all about the Solar System, some really amazing shots

Cool Picture??

Took this at the Apple farm and thought it turned out pretty neat:

Family Walk

With summer coming to an end (sorry someone had to say it....) we decided to go for a walk last night because we were not sure how many more nice summer nights there would be.
We went to a trail that is owned by my place of employment

It is a nice little walk in and around the Jock River, and a nice natural setting in a urban area. We got to the trailhead and Keir had to make a ..... errr.... "pitstop"

With that out of the way we set off. BTW Keir decided we should pack supplies for the hike, hence both of the backpacks on the kids. Keir's didn't last long (about 5mins and then he decided it was too heavy). The trail leads you down to the river. Here is what you see looking the "nice" way (i.e. the natural way)

and here is the looking the other direction:

The kids had fun exploring all around up and down:

All in all it was a nice little walk, espcially considerding it was 10mins from home.
Here is the full photo set here

That is all for now
Take care

Ewan