Some reading to do…

Not many people are reading this anymore, but I thought I would point out some sites that my family is working on.

http://www.wheatfreefamily.com – D, Sam’s older sister, has a family that is wheat intolerant/allergic.  Because of this, and the challenges she’s faced trying to feed her family in a wheat free world she has started this website as an outlet for her discoveries and to provide the information she’s found to the rest of the world.

http://www.defianceart.com – Dianne is the proprietor of Defiance Art and Design.  I’ve mentioned her on my photography blog, but thought I’d mention her here too.  Dianne is (in my humble opinion) a genius with art and design. She’s smart, does modern design that feels timeless and is building a business in web design. (An official one now, she’s done it for some time as a sideline gig – I hope that’s not a bad description.)

http://qsquires.blogspot.com/– Sam’s Mother is blogging here, as Matriarch of the Squires.  Lots of family updates, waaaaay  more up to date than I am here.

http://jclossphoto.wordpress.com/ – Is my photography blog, in case any of you three readers have somehow missed it.  I am using it to chronicle my 52 weeks project (which is currently 1 photoshoot behind, as I’m not the greatest at staying up to date on editing) and to post general photography insights, tips and stories.

http://www.defianceart.com/JClossPhoto.htm – Will take you to the launch date page for my new website, which is in the works.  Dianne is helping me to build it, and it will launch on the 21st of this month.  I don’t have the domain registered right now, but when I do this image will be parked there as well.

Well – that’s us in a nutshell.  I have some more recipes I need to put up, and I should put up a general update soon as well.  Addison is 4 months old now, and growing.  She’s currently in the Jolly Jumper behind me having a ball.

Dylan is growing, and daily turning into a little girl.  She’s clever, and fearless.

Ivy is turning into a real gymnast.  She’s as precocious as ever, and constantly challenges us – usually in good ways!

More to come, stay tuned.

Some Updates

I’m trying to stay updated on things, but it’s tough.  Life is busy.

Addison Clary Closs is now 6 weeks old.  She’s 9 lbs and change and really, really cute.  She keeps us busy.

We bought a puppy.  It’s called Anastasia, or Stacy for short.  She’s a Maremma Sheepdog, or Maremma Abruzzi.  They come from Italy and are fierce protectors that get to about 28 inches to the shoulder and weigh in at about 70-90lbs.

I started another blog.  It’s for my new photography project for the year, 52 photowalks.  I’m going to do a planned photowalk/shoot each week and post some photos from it.  I hope to see some progress in my photography.  I’m taking lessons as well, and I’m going to count my lessons as some of my photowalks for the year.  We’ll see how it goes.

You can find the link here. http://jclossphoto.wordpress.com

Feel free to comment, or not.  I’m sure not many are reading this now.

I guess it should be called Jeff and Sam plus 3 plus a dog.  But really, that’s a bit of a mouthful.

For now, signing off.

Planting, Cleaning, Building, Oil-Changing

Well, I went for a ride with Greg and Kate today.  We hopped on the bikes and followed Greg’s parents out the the Yorston Farm and had Cinnamon Buns.  They have an event called Cinnamon Sunday each Sunday in May.  Buns are 1$ each and really, really yummy.  We took some curvy roads home. (Yorston Farm, incidentally, is where we went to the super awesome corn maze last year, and will be going again this fall.)

When I got home I changed my oil and filter in my bike.  Nice clean oil now, will be dirty in a day or two.  The curvy roads were fun, and Greg brought the extra pieces for my left fairing, so I can hopefully tighten up my dash and whatnot.  Sweetness.

Tom, Chris, Scott, Sam and I worked on putting together Ivy’s new swing set!  She loves it, it has one baby swing in the middle, two big kid swings, a slide and a teeter-totter.  The whole thing was enjoyed by all of the kids, because Mel brought her little ones, Ally and James over as well!  Super awesome sunny Sunday. (And it was Sun-Day as well, nice and warm at about 22*C)

Then we had some yummy barbecued pork chops, courtesy of Samantha.  Salad too – the first and only thing I ate today other than a cinnamon bun.  It was super to sit outside with the family and enjoy some dinner.

After dinner Samantha and I cleaned the barbecue, CLR and Scotch-Pads baby!  We scrubbed and hosed and sprayed and cursed and cleaned and rinsed and …. whew!  The BBQ should be nice and clean for next thing we cook on it – maybe ceder plank salmon tomorrow night.

I also managed to get our three herb pots planted, the three pepper plants and the extra herbs in the herb garden in the back.  I’m hoping my garlic chives and leeks do well back there too – the rubarb is still scrawny, it hasn’t put down good roots yet.  Maybe I should find some good food safe fertilizer to drop down back there.  We have parsley and something else new – can’t even remember what I planted.

Then, to finish off the night Chris, Sam and I put some Mario Kart Wii on and raced ourselves silly.  I have to get my sorry, sunburned butt to work in the morning, so I’m about to crash now.  See y’all later!

PS.

Welcome to summer time!

Pictures

I pulled these photos out of my flickr account.  I need to pay to get a yearly subscription though, as I’ve used up half my alloted amount already.

Dylan Aubrey Closs, with Dad.  Less than one full day old.

Dylan in the hospital bassinet, with Mom’s hand.

Dylan at home, with her blankies.  Sam thought she looked like she was praying, so I snapped a couple of pictures of her like this while she was in her moses basket.

Baby Dylan with Auntie Jen. (I love that bambi blanket. Shhh!)

The earliest picture ever of her.  This is right after delivery on mommy’s chest, still cord attached.  At this point the Dr. was attaching the clamps and whatnot in preperation for me to cut the cord, which I did.  Didn’t know if I would be able to – but it wasn’t so difficult.  The hard part was stopping the waterworks while I did it. ;)

More posts to come with details about the whole adventure, and how things are going now.  For now, the quick update is that Ivy is doing good as a big sister, we’re settling in fine, and Dylan is super cute.  We’re very, very happy.  And we need sleepers with mittens built in! ;)

Labour Update

Just got a call from Jeff…

Sam is 3cm dialated and her contractions are 5 min. apart.

They are going out for lunch, and then heading back to the hospital to have the baby! I’m so excited!

Now the question is… Boy or Girl??

I’ll post more when I hear from Jeff again.

Cheers,

Various and Sundry

Sitting at home, chillin.

Sam is tired, she’s been up since before 3am. She just had a contraction at 10:37 – so we are measuring to find the next one before we call our Mom’s back and give them the update. Also, more to the point for Sam, she can try and get some sleep after the next one.

We went shopping this morning, washed the truck. Put the infant seat in. Bought some necessities.

Now we’re sitting at home, so I did a geeky test, this is the result I got.

You are a dog

Or maybe you are a mosquito, you certainly can’t be human.The highest pitched ultrasonic mosquito ringtone that I can hear is 21.1kHz

Find out which ultrasonic ringtones you can hear!

I figured I’d take the test online, and find out what is the highest of the “silent” ringtones I can here.  Turns out I have pretty good ears still, surprisingly.

More later.

Updates

I added Erin from evilclomid.com to our blog as a contributer.  She should be able to login and post an update if need be.  You can phone me Erin if you like, or I can phone you once things get moving and we know it’s not false labor.

I hope you don’t mind that I just imposed  on you by selecting you to be our update person. ;)

Time to put up more Ivy pics.

So that’s what I’m doing. I’ll update this post as I get them up on Flickr.

Ivy and Gabe, Summer 2007

Ivy and Mom, Summer 2007.  She’s outgrown her Aunt Jemima outfit now, maybe we’ll have a girl to hand it down to!

Our house before renovations, sumer 2007.  I put this up for Chelsea, so she could see what it looks like.  The outside is much the same, the inside is what counts!  But I don’t have good pics of that yet!

Same photo, about the same time, but taken in front of the lilacs.  I love lilacs, and we lucked out with a couple of nice ones, plus an awesome japanese maple tree in the front yard.

Just doing some housekeeping. Ignore me.

Just ignore me. Like the cleaning lady, or Jeeves, I don’t really exist.

I’m just here to insert a harmless little meta tag.

Ch..Ch..Ch..Chaaaang-eesssss.

Let us know what you think.  Sam and I both like the new colour scheme, and the whole layout actually.  We have one thing that annoys us in particular about this new theme, so we’ll see if it’s the same sort of thing that annoys you guys.

Please leave us some comments about what you think of the new layout, and suggestions on how we could fix it.

We added some new :about: pages.  You can browse through them to get some more idea of who we are – eventually I’ll get some photo’s uploaded on flickr or something for me to embed into each of those.

We also put up a page as sort of a gift registry.  It’s called Baby Wants & Needs.  Feel free to comment there with suggestions, questions and whatever else.

Cheers!

Jeff, Sam and Ivy