Well, I’m a bit behind in my blog posting! Another Halloween has come and gone!

Noah, dressed up for the halloween parade at school:

He was so well disguised that my mother, who was standing right next to me, didn’t recognize him, I had to ask him to remove his mask so she would see him!

Rebecca joined me on walking to collect Noah from school…here she looks quite normal…

…and here she is done up for halloween night!

Sitting on our neighbours front steps:

With our neighbours daughter, Alison, the child vampire!

And just one more shot of her, black nail polish would have finished the look I think!

Noah, practicing for the night ahead:

Thought this was a cool shot with the lit up windows of the house in the background:

And, last but not least, (as I did last year) some halloween pumpkins from the night!

My girl is 12 years old today! Hard to believe. It’s gone by fast, but it also seems like a long, long time ago when I remember the day she was born.

Following a tradition we started a few years ago, we went to lunch, just the two of us. Of course, now that she’s in grade 7, it isn’t cool for me to pick her up at school. So she called me on her cell as she got to the restaurant and came inside.

And, yes, she has changed her hair colour!

I picked a table so we were right by the windows, and she was facing them. I’m starting to get used to her new hair colour, kind of. I decided to pick my battles, and hope she will quickly grow out of wanting to change her hair colour!

We took turns checking out the desserts, caught her on the way back:

I asked the restaurant, before she arrived, if they could put a candle in whatever we ordered for dessert:

One last shot before she headed back to school for the afternoon:

Today, on her actual birthday, we had our family celebration:

And another year has pasted!

I used to be caught off guard, in previous years, that soccer would start off on the FIRST week back to school, but I’ve learned now, so we were one of the few people who were actually at the first game. (Thankfully they slowly trickled in so we were able to have a game! I don’t think that it helped that there was confusion with the schedule, it changed at the last minute, so we had people showing up to the wrong park for their game!)

Noah decided to play goalie, his favourite position, for the first game of the season:

Ok! Let’s play (soccer) ball!

I think he’ll play a different position next game, he spent a lot of time waiting for some action…

…and waiting…

…watching…

…and waiting…

Am I ever going to see any action???

Yeah! The ball! Finally!

He still enjoyed himself, my son is a natural athlete!

I’m sure I’ll be posting more soccer photos as the season progresses…hopefully we’ll have a nice warm and dry fall! (Fingers crossed!)

Wow! Didn’t realize I was so far behind in posting some images!

This one is from about two weeks ago, out and about running some errands:

We stopped by the local vet’s to visit kittens, again:

This past Sunday, once we determined that the weather was going to hold, we decided to make use of a free family pass to Centreville on Centre Island. Here’s a shot of Rebecca on the ferry on the way over to the Island:

Rebecca and Noah exit the Haunted Barrel Works ride at Centreville:

Rebecca on the Log Flume Ride:

Rebecca and Noah enjoying the roller coaster:

During dinner Noah was creating steam from his iced drink, can you see it?

Here Rebecca holds up what Noah choose to get instead of dessert, and funnily enough he named this little guy “Dessert”!

“Dessert” even went for a ride with Noah, see him there? They both had a great time!

At 8:15 pm we caught the ferry back to the mainland, I caught this shot of the skyline:

Then this shot of Rebecca with the skyline in the background:

And who could resist shooting this sky? Beautiful colour and amazing cloud formation as well!

Noah, with Rebecca in the background:

On Monday afternoon we went to the park and I caught this shot of ‘Maggie’s’ nose:

Here is Maggie, a 9-year-old Golden Retriever that Rebecca just LOVES, she is a very sweet dog:

Maggie’s paws:

One more of Maggie:

Rebecca against the fence at the baseball diamond:

As we were leaving the park the children pointed out a beautiful sunflower right beside the school:

On Tuesday we went for haircuts, here is the after of Rebecca:

And here is the after of Noah, isn’t that a great haircut?

And one more of Rebecca, who was happy to show off her new do:

That’s all for the moment!

Last Sunday the children and I went with a friend to Kensington Market and met up with a new friend, Jane, and her two children Henry and Sadie. The weather was perfect!

Since it is such a colourful location I decided to really punch the colours up, for fun, in most of the photos.

Here Rebecca holds up a massive sweet potato from one of the outdoor stalls:

Noah watches over Henry as he examines displayed jewelry:

Rebecca also was very good at watching over Henry, as they make their way along the busy sidewalk:

Henry watches his sister in the distance:

We stop for a quick lunch break:

This puppet fellow was so funny! The kids had a great time watching him. Noah was so great with Henry, taking care of him and holding him up to see:

Rebecca, Sadie and Henry check out the puppet:

Noah gets up close and personal with the puppet:

Jane and her kids went home, as it was getting to be nap time, wish they could have stayed for SnoKones…

…and especially the bubbles!

Rebecca takes a break from window shopping, and the bubbles:

So much colour in Kensington Market! Really need to do a couple or a family shoot here I think!

More bubbles!

Noah has a meat paddy for a snack as Rebecca looks on:

Even though he has meat paddy crumbs on his face and shirt, I just LOVE the catch lights in his eyes in this shot:

Will definitely head back to Kensington Market again in the future!

Well, I thought I should finish the tale of the baby robins, even though it pains me to do so. It has turned into a sad story, and even though I know this is the way of the animal world, it’s still really hard for me to look at these images without feeling sad.

Read on if you’d like to hear the story…or just skim over the words and keep your eyes on the photos if you’d like to enjoy them but not know the outcome.

This shot was taken on Thursday, July 24th. Babies are still growing fast and the mother is keeping a close eye on them:

The next six images were taken the next day, Friday, July 25th. The older ones are becoming more aware of their surroundings and not as quick to pop-up looking for food as the youngest.

Noah hangs out with me, just inside the front door, to watch the babies on the Friday.

The next images were taken on Saturday, July 26th. I think you can start to see one of the issues…the nest is quite small for the growing babies.

Noah is watching the babies with me, and I manage to catch some shots of him:

This is the last shot I have of the runt of the brood, at some point Saturday night, or Sunday during the day (as we were out all day…images to follow), the baby of the group disappeared. I’m sure that the two larger siblings pushed it out of the nest, though I’m not sure what happened to it at that point as we could find no sign of it.

It still makes me sad to see images of the baby, as it was my favorite. I can’t help thinking that if the little guy could have just lasted in the nest for another 24–36 hours….

On Sunday the children were sure that the smallest one was under the two largest ones…the next day it became obvious that that wasn’t the case. Whenever we came out of the house the two remaining babies would hunker down in the nest.

That night we had a rain storm, the mother came to watch over, and sometimes hovered overtop of the two remaining babies protecting them from the rain.

On Monday, July 28th at first there was great excitement, as Noah looked out my office window and saw one of the babies out of the nest, on a branch. We all ran down to see, and I grabbed this quick shot.

The excitement quickly turned to screaming and tears though. Rebecca and I went back inside to finish getting ready to go off to camp. Noah came back in to put his shoes on, to go outside and watch the babies. I soon heard screaming and crying, that one of the babies was on the road (for those that don’t know, Avenue Road is a large North/South road in Toronto, where we are it’s a very busy four lane section), and dashed down and outside. Indeed, one of the babies was on the road, I at a loss as to what to do as I waved the northbound traffic around the baby, and then, not knowing what else to do, scooped up the baby to get it off the road. It was dead, likely hit by a car as it tried to practice flying. Unfortunately, rather then keeping close to the houses along Avenue Road, it made the fatal mistake of flying straight out into morning traffic. Maybe because the parents often flew across and perched on a house across the street.

Noah was very upset, crying and crying. It was so sad and tragic. We buried the robin in the front yard before making our way to camp.

Of course the thing that became very obvious to me, upon my return home (as I watched the nest to confirm) was that indeed the runt of the brood was no longer there. Sigh. I was so sad to confirm my suspicion.

That evening I caught this shot of the remaining baby, as it perched on the nest, ready to venture out into the world. Noah was taking no chances with the remaining baby, and spent much of the night between the baby and Avenue Road, so as to block the baby if it decided to follow the fate of its’ sibling.

Caught this shot of the baby out of the nest and further south on Avenue Road.

Then this last shot, at about 7:45 pm. I managed to convince Noah to come in for the night at about 8:20, telling him he simply could not stay out all night keeping the baby safe, even though he wanted to.

The mother and father were watching over their last baby, swooping down to feed it wherever it may have been. That is the last we’ve seen of the parents and baby, though I’m very happy to report that we saw no sign of a baby robin dead on Avenue Road the next morning. I’m hoping that this one, at least, has survived and could very well be full grown by now.

Sorry that this had to be a sad post, for those who have been following the story. It is very strange to go out the front door and have the empty nest sitting there. I miss having the babies around.

I’ll have some fun shots of a visit to Kensington Market last Sunday posted later today or tomorrow….

The following were taken on the 23rd and 24th of July. The babies continue to grow, and as you can see the largest is really getting his feathers in. It probably won’t be long until he leaves the nest.

Here you can see the difference between the youngest, on the right, and the eldest, in the middle.

You can see how much the feathers have come in, they are growing fast!

I love this shot of youngest and oldest chest to chest, you can really see the difference in their developmentL

The eldest almost looks like he’s got the whole nest to himself in this shot! The little nest is getting quite crowded:

Thought this was a bit of a funny shot, as the babies are all facing the wrong way, and not towards their mother, but they could obviously sense that she was there!

If you enjoy these images keep watching the blog! I will be posting more in the days to come….

Back in late June I happened to notice that we had new neighbours, a robin had built a nest in a tree right in front of our house. Frankly I was questioning this mother bird’s ability to mother as I don’t think she could have picked a more unstable tree if she tried! This evergreen tree makes me think of the sad little christmas tree in “A Charlie Brown Christmas”. It is quite droopy and seems to be anchored to the house, allowing it to remain upright.

Nevertheless, shortly after we noticed the nest we saw a beautiful blue egg, followed by three more.

Well, last week the babies hatched! We are not sure what happened to the fourth egg as there are only three babies. They are growing very fast with the first images taken last Thursday and the last of the images take yesterday.

Here the father hovers over the nest:

One baby looks for food:

It’s hard to see in this image, but there is one baby behind the front one, and then the beak of the third to the right:

A bit of a mumble jumble of babies:

Time to have a nap (this shot, and the next six, were taken on the 20th):

They have grown so much in only three days!

Mom arrives:

They’re still hungry!

And in between feedings they nap:

The father looks on from a nearby tree:

A closer macro shot:

I had to wait for quite a while, very quietly, to frame this shot:

They look rather alien like to me…what do you think?

They are now stretching quite far out of the nest in search of food from their parents, so much larger then when they were born ~6 or so days ago:

The three babies really fill up the little nest now:

This one is the smallest of the three, and looking for more food to catch up to the siblings:

Snoozing:

Looking for food, but not making too much of an effort at it:

Check back soon as I will continue to chronicle the babies growth, until they leave the nest (which will probably be soon given the fast growth!), I should have some new images in the next few days.

Hmmmm, yet another week’s worth of images…I really need to try to build some time into the week to upload on a more regular basis! Well, I do have some more images to upload, so I will aim to do that in the next day or two…certainly before the end of the week in any case!

The kids and I had an errand to run up at Yonge and St. Clair the other day, so had a quick bite of some sushi (actually Noah passed on the sushi, and had McD’s instead! Crazy kid! lol).

I decided to throw the Lensbaby G3 on the camera, but forgot that I had the star shaped aperture disk installed, which explains the star shaped bokeh!

With this shot I realized I had the star shaped aperture disk installed…kind of hard to miss in this one!

And in this one too!

Then I switched back to the regular round disk:

Back to my fav 85:

Shot this one of my sister in very low light conditions, gotta love a fast aperture for that!

Diane is a really old friend of my sister’s and mine from high school days. I haven’t seen her in about 23 years or so! And she’s just as beautiful as she was back then!

Shot wide open under an overpass:

Just out and about on the street somewhere:

Ran into this good looking kitty in a back alley on the way home. Managed to get a few shots before he became much too interested in just saying hello and jumped off the car to visit with us.

That’s all for today…more to follow tomorrow!

Went out for some night shooting in the Distillery District with some fellow photographers this weekend. The rules were simple, focus on composition and include people in every shot. The low light was challenging, slow shutter speeds and it was hard for the camera to focus automatically in such low light, but it was a beautiful night to be out and it was fun! Enjoy!