More photos of Claire - Geoff's album

Here is a link to Geoff's (proud daddy) album on FaceBook. They are public so you don't need an FB account to view them.

Geoff Boothroyd's Photos - Claire Abigail McCann Boothroyd

Claire Boothroyd - Photos

Here is a link to my Claire Boothroyd Album on FB:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=76559&id=1222212000&l=fa4af1b88c

Plus a few photos to make this post look pretty :-)

Claire Abigail Boothroyd - Welcome into the world

Geoff and Miriam have asked me to let you all know that they have a safely delivered daughter, Claire Abigail, born 16:56 Toronto time, weighing 6lb 13 oz (3.09 kg).

According to Ingrid Claire is beautiful, looking perfect and, at the time, crying :-) Miriam, herself, had quite a long push at the end - about 2 hrs. When I spoke to Ingrid Miriam was fine and very happy - as well she deserves to be.

Congratulations Mommy and Daddy on the birth of your daughter and, Claire Abigail, welcome to the world of flashing lights and moving shapes and cacophony of sound and, in the midst of it all, the wonderful sound of your mother's voice. Congratulations, too, Sharon and Alan, on the birth of your grand-daughter.

Thanks to all of you, family and friends of Miriam and Geoff, and friends of family and friends, for your interest, support, prayers and whatever other positive input you have had to the safe delivery of their daughter and our grand-daughter.

Photos to follow as soon as we have them.

- Ingrid and Terry

Tah Dah!! Miriam went in this evening

On Tuesday when Miriam went for her weekly checkup the obstetrician told her she should come in Thursday (today) for an induction when there was a bed free for her. She finally received a call 9:30 this evening. Geoff and Ingrid will be in the labour ward with her. Hopefully we can give you some good news in the morning sometime.

Meanwhile we hope and pray for a safe delivery for baby Claire and for good health and strength for Miriam.

Stephen and Heather in Morocco (Part 4)

subject Re: ello from morocco

Hi,

three weeks later we are back in Casablanca after a wonderfull time in Morocco. Our last week or so has included trekking around in the beautiful Dades Valley with a very sweet man. Our favourite hike was through a gorge where we pretty much had to wade waste deep the whole way through the river that ran through the gorge.

We then went on to Marrekesh where we got a little city shocked after spending 2 weeks in the peacefull Morocco countryside (arriving at 9PM without a hotel booked was not the best idea). We decided that 2 nights in the city was enough and then went on to the very laid back beach town Essaouira (pronounced sa-wee-ra). The town became hippie central after Jimmie Hendrix spent some time there...we couldnt walk 10 meters on the beach without being offered "space cake".

While there we managed to catch the absolutely awesome Netherlands-Brasil match at one of the local watering holes: being 99% Muslim, watering holes in morroco are not bars, but cafès that are packed with men (Heather was the only woman) sipping their cafè au lait or their thè là menthe (mint tea) while cheering on their favourite team (Morroco cheered for netherlands because one of the players is from Morroco. We were congratulated by several men after the game).

Thinking that our flight to rome left Monday morning we headed back to Casablanca on Saturday (travelling between towns here pretty much requires an entire day...everything runs on african time), but silly us, our flight is tuesday morning so we got an extra day in Casablanca which is probably the worst place in morroco to kill time as there is literally nothing to do here, although it wasnt entirely without incident with a movie being filmed in our hotel...more to come about that; unfortunately it doesnt involve us being movie stars.

Tomorrow it is off to Rome and then back in Toronto on Saturday!

See you all soon,

Steve

Our Summer Garden

This is our garden in the summer. Ingrid and I consider ourselves extremely blessed and fortunate to have this beauty around us.

The birch tree in the left corner of our small front garden.

Left. Ingrid's garden at the back. It's a bit wild but that seems to fit and we like it that way.

This patch (picture right) is looked after by Barb, our next door neighbour. That spot is where there used to be twin trees that got blown down onto our roofs in a possible tornado a few years ago. The trees were on the property borderline and the stumps were difficult to remove. Barb asked us if we minded if she turned it into a garden. Hello? Would we mind?

Our willow tree. We get a lot of spring snow-melt running through our back yard so this willow is a great help. We had some tree people in to give it a hair cut last winter to get rid of dead branches and reduce wind resistance. Having that blow down is not what anyone would want. If you zoom in you can see the house of another neighbour who borders our property.

This is looking straight down to the bottom of our yard. It's actually quite swampy at the bottom right through until the end of June.

Left. Another view of Ingrid's garden, this time in the early evening.



My sundial in the front garden. It's not a very good sundial as sundials go. I calibrated it at midday at the equinox (allowing for daylight saving) and by two o'clock in the afternoon it was already showing the wrong time. It was made in China so I put it down to a latitude problem. Maybe they heard it was for Canada so they designed it for the Arctic Circle. Or maybe whoever ordered them gave the suppliers too much latitude. (I made that up myself.) Whatever. I still keep it because it reminds me of an age when time was measured in seasons and the smallest unit of day to day measure was an hour. I can sit in my garden and let the nano-seconds take care of themselves. The only time I have to worry about is whether it's time for another beer.