22 August 2008

Your Baby Announcement





Hey Stefen and Chelsea,

Here is your first sample Announcement for Gavin. What do you think?

Chelsa

10 August 2008

Sugar Shacks & 16


My Sister took this cool photo as we were flying from Alberta to BC. The yellow canola fields that line the prairies is one of my favourite things about summer in Alberta!




This is my brother, Carson, & me on his 16th birthday! (and he's a great driver!) The following photos are snapshots of his birthday party with lake friends...







My cousin's daughter - Stephanie - came out to the lake all by herself this year! She taught me something very important with these balloons... how to suck out the helium & then talk like a chipmunk. Her mother would be very proud :) These last shots of the day are some of my favourites - everything is just bathed in sunset :)

09 August 2008

Camping, Hotsprings, Rodeos & Rides

These are totally out of order! But sometime in the middle of my trip - after my sister, Lindsay, & I took our little road trip out west, we hooked up with all my sweet relatives at the infamous Calgary Stampede.

Becca & I rode that crazy ride together...you'll see a snapshot of it if you scroll down!

Oh yes, the Calgary Tower! All during the Stampede weeks, you will see pretty much 4 out of 5 Albertans wearing some kind of cowboy getup. Apparently soon after Red Deer has its Westerner Days, and Edmonton has Klondike Days...I think we all have a little cowboy in us...


This cowgirl is my cousin Jenna! She rode the crazy ride with her friend, as did both my aunts!



This is my incredibly fabulous cousin Nicole. When I first arrived in Canada, she came out to the lake with my family to hang out with me & keep my mind off of missing Ben!

Lindsay & I decided to take a spur-of-the-moment road trip out to the Rocky Mountains - past Radium Hot Springs - & "camp" for a night in the back of our dad's Denali. hmmm. Not such a great sleep...
But we ate good thanks to Lindsay, and man, those natural hot springs were something else....I kept thinking "if only i could transport ben here somehow so he could soak his sore muscles.."

Yours Truly :) Stay tuned, there are so many more Summer 08 photos!

04 August 2008

My Friend Amanda








Wow, I sure have a lot of catching up to do here! Blogging as well as just going through the photos that I have taken in the past 2 months while I was up in Canada. I really have no excuse for my neglect of the blog other than the weather was just too nice, the friends & family too fun, and the Okanagan Lake calling my name. As I work through some of the photos, I will post some up of a few of my beautiful friends and family.

I was blessed to be able to spend the last 6 weeks of my husband's Ranger School up in Canada. And I am grateful to have the friends and family that I do, they definitely kept my spirits up and kept me busy during that time apart from my man!

I will start with my friend Amanda. Amanda and I went to high school together back in the day! She's one of those friends I know I can always count on - even if we are half a world apart. In the past 2 years, she has spent a number of months in Ghana, working alongside her University doing projects in community development. She is planning on going back to Ghana for another 2 years any time now!

Now let me tell you about this little Portrait Session. We did this as kind of her "grad photos", but it's a good thing we had our friend Nate along to stand guard. Early on in the session we heard this big growl, and me, not knowing a whole lot about "growls", didn't think anything of it. Apparently it was a bear. Yep. Bear Country. So Nate stood guard, and would give us updates every so often on the bear's movements (it was in the bush so we didn't have a visual). Anyway, you know how hard it is to pull yourself away from a photo session when you are in "the zone" - bear or no bear - but there finally came a point where Nate highly recommended that maybe we move our session elsewhere.

The moral of the story? It is good to have guys around that know a thing or two about bears :)

Check out the rest of her photos