In Loving Memory of Kurt Schlüter

Papa, you never said you were leaving
You never said goodbye
You were gone before I knew it,
And only God knew why
A million times I needed you,
A million times I cried
If love alone could have saved you,
You never would have died
In life I loved you dearly
In death I love you still
In my heart you hold a place,
That no one could ever fill
It broke my heart to lose you,
But you didn’t go alone
For part of me went with you,
The day God took you home.

April 6, 1938 - November 25, 2011

I will miss you forever,

Dein Schnuckel

Family A - a session in the park!

On Saturday I met up with the A Family for a family photo session at Sims Lake Park (it seems that is my stomping ground lately!). This was a challenging one for all the adults, I think. The kids were just not quite in the "zone" (who can blame them?) and so for much of the time I just followed them and snapped what I could. The results are lovely!

Although the shoot was perhaps a little different from what the Mom and her photographer had envisaged, I still managed to capture some very cute and loving moments that will bring joy to anybody who looks at them, but most of all this beautiful family!

Thanks for hanging in there dear A Family, I hope that these pictures will make you smile for many moons to come!  

Three busy boys!

Last Tuesday I met the three H boys at Sims Lake Park for a picture session and they gave me a run for my money! We had it all: a painful shin scraping accident, a boy with wet shoes and jeans and at the end we very narrowly escaped a huge downpour of rain. Their mother and I had been crossing everything since that morning so that we would be able to get the shoot in the bag before the big storm! We were very, very lucky!

The colors are stunning and the Japanese Maple looks like it is on fire! The pictures of these handsome boys lying in the foliage are wonderful. And the individual portraits turned out really well too.

Although I know that these 3 busy boys really wanted to be doing anything else but take pictures, they did pretty well and the results are utterly charming - thanks for bearing with me!

  

Our Adventure up North

A few weeks ago Alex and I had the opportunity to join Ben on one of his many trips up north into Buffalo, NY. Around these parts my husband is now known as the "Buffalo Soldier" because he has been up there so often and he actually does come from Africa!

We flew into Buffalo and then took a hired car to travel further north to the Niagara Falls. First we had a look from the American side and then we crossed the border into Canada to have a look there and also to spend a night in a hotel right by the falls.

Although the surroundings feel like you've stepped back into the 70s and there is no beauty there (actually it is pretty ugly) the falls are spectacular. And I'm sorry America, but the Canadian Horseshoe Falls are better! 

The next day we had special reservations for a helicopter flight over the falls. This was a surprise for Alex, who had been wanting to fly a helicopter ever since Ben got to fly one in the summer. But I think when it did happen, he was flabbergasted for most of the experience. 

I had enjoyed the same flight in probably the same helicopter 15 years ago - never in my wildest dreams would I have thought I'd be doing it again in my lifetime, let alone with my husband and son! I am so blessed! After the adrenaline rush of the flight, we drove towards Toronto but stayed in Oakville outside of the city with friends, who were kind enough to offer us their spare bed. 

We really enjoyed the Toronto area. One day was spent sightseeing around the city. We enjoyed a city tour in the Hippo Bus, which is a unique 40 passenger vessel that offers land and water tours of Toronto. Super cool! 

Once I had cleaned up my camera after an unfortunate pigeon poop incident (Can you believe it! Thank heavens for disinfectant wipes!), we had lunch in a teeny-tiny Japanese Restaurant, which we just happened to stumble across - absolutely outstanding!!! You couldn't swing a cat in that place but still they had about 9 small tables that were busy all the time.

After lunch we took the subway to Union Station, which is undergoing major renovations. It is a beautiful building! And I love the experiment in the subway with the moving trains and the weird lighting. From there we went to the CN Tower (via a little detour where we almost landed up in a sex expo, with our 4 year old in tow!). Alex loved and still loves the CN Tower! He had no issues standing on the glass floor. Ben on the other hand...

We had a lovely time on our mini-tour, I'm glad we had this opportunity to show Alex another part of the world and add another country to his repertoire.


Enjoy the many, many pictures!