Pumpkin Patch!

Last Saturday I went to the local pumpkin patch with my friend Serena and her two kids Keith and Ayyah. We slacked off and went to the patch waaay too late so all of the good pumpkins were gone...the only ones left were tiny, green or rotten! Boo! It was my first time going to a real pumpkin patch, so it was great anyways!

Here's Keithy sittin in a pile of pumpkins at a nursery we went to after the patch. There was a maze for little kiddies made out of hay bales and a little haunted house! I took Ayyah through the house and she had such a brave face on, but she was holding my hand awfully tight! :)
Back to the patch...it was so cute! It was this little garden with a tin box that you put money into! You go out into the patch, pick your pumpkin and put $2 into the box! I love small towns!

Here is Ayyah standing against one of the ginormous sunflowers that the farmer had growing at the pumpkin patch! It was seriously the biggest sunflower I have ever seen!

Ayyah investigating some dead plants! Keithy fell asleep in the truck on the way there, so we decided it would be best to let him snooze while we searched for pumpkins. He is a little bear when he wakes up from naps! Lol!

Here we are at the barren pumpkin patch! There were almost no pumpkins left! Ahh! We each got a couple of little green ones, just to support the local farmers. I think we're going to go to the supermarket and buy some of the giant orange ones heheh!

A New Baby in the Family!

So as I mentioned in my last post, Cael's brother and sister in law were expecting their first baby. Here's a little backstory: Mike and Tara were married on the beach in Hawaii a couple of years ago. While visiting Maui, they fell in love with an amazing place called Makena Beach. Makena is a beautiful white sand beach that stretches almost a mile on south Maui, and is very popular skim boarders and body borders.

So...when their first little one came around they decided to name her Makena! Little Miss made her appearance almost mid day on October 18th in Toronto after poor Tara was in labour for 31 hours. She weighed in at a whopping 9lbs 12 ounces and 21 inches! She was too comfortable in there because she decided to stay in for an extra 10 days!
Makena is such a gorgeous little baby! We can't wait to fly back to Toronto and visit the family again! She's the first baby for both families so it is extra exciting :)

As with all newborns, Makena sleeps like a little angel all day and wakes poor mom up every half an hour for feedings during the night! Let's hope for Tara and Mike that she gets over that quickly! LOL!

Livin it up Toronto Style!

C and I are in Ontario right now relaxing and seeing the sites! We got here on Thursday afternoon and spent the last couple of days hanging out in Toronto with C's brother Mike and his wife Tara. They have been SOOO sweet and taken us around to some of the really cool tourist spots in TO (Tara is 9+months pregnant with their first, due last Wed)! I've never been to Eastern Canada before, so being here in the fall is a real treat!

We went to the C.N. Tower yesterday for lunch and it was AMAZING! C.N. Tower is an observatory tower and revolving restaraunt that was the tallest manmade structure in the world for years and years. There is a section of floor that is made of glass and it is so freaky! The tower is over 1200 ft high, so looking down is scary!
Here's the view from the observatory deck. It was super windy and cold even though Toronto was about 24 degrees yesterday.

View from the base.

We also went to the Toronto Zoo! It was so much fun! I'm not usually too into zoos, but this one was absolutely amazing! It has over 5000 animals on acres and acres of forest land in the middle of the city! So cool! C is family friends with one of the zookeepers there, so she took us on a behind the scenes tour of the African pavilion. We got to meet (and touch) a big python, chameleon and a pygmy hippopotamus names Abu! She was adorable! As soon as she heard people in her area she came running over to the fence! All my pics of her are super blurry, so I probably won't post em.

Full-size hippo (not sweet Abu)!

A gorgeous African elephant! I've never seen an elephant in real life, but I've always been in love with them, so it was pretty special to be so close! They are so amazing! We also saw giraffes, tigers, lions, zebra, gorillas, orangutans, baboons, cheetahs....the list goes on! It was so much fun! We missed a couple of pavillions b/c everyone was getting a bit tired after roaming the zoo for 4 hours! Next time!!!

Down at the Lake!

I figured I should take advantage of the half decent weather this morning at break out the old camera again so I drove to a nearby lake. The light wasn't the best b/c it was still fairly early and really cloudy, but I messed with the shutterspeed until it looked ok.

I can't wait to take some pics of the orange and gold trees in Ontario next week! I love BC, but I need some bright colours to take pics of! :) Wish us luck tonight! A storm is blowing in with winds up to 100km an hour! It doesn't seem like much compared to the girlies who hunkered down during the hurricanes, but it's pretty windy for BC!

Mini Photo Shoot

Last week my friend Serena came to visit me with her two lovely kiddies Ayyah and Keithy. It was a gorgeous day, so we decided to go out and play in the grass. I have been practicing with my camera lately and I figured these two would be great little models!

The setting:

Running along....hard to keep up with these little monkeys! Ayyah is 4 1/2 and Keithy is just over 1 1/2. They have so much energy!
Ayyah's mom Serena is a photographer and so are her parents...Ayyah knows how to strike a pose whenever a camera comes out! Lol! There is a little bit too much light on her...gotta learn how to work the sun!

So in my last blog I wrote about this mysterious herd of elk that has been roaming my area...well the very next day we saw them! I heard this weird bird-like chirping sound coming from over a nearby bluff, so Ayyah and I went to investigate. Lo and behold there were half a dozen female elk stomping through the bushes across the street! They were absolutely HUGE! Serena and I decided to pack up the kids in her truck and go on an elk-hunting mission! We offroaded some of the dirt roads searching for them, but alas they had moved too deep into the woods. Ayyah was poking her head out the window behind me and I saw her in the sideview mirror. I thought this was a pretty cute shot of her! She is such a camera ham I love it!