What’s this? Paul has a new Blog? But he never updated the old one? Well I’m sure that trend will continue with my all new blog. But at least it may give a glimmer of hope for some updates in the immediate future, while I set up my new site, until the novelty wears off of course.

My new blog is powered by Wordpress, which gives me more control over the look and feel of my blog. I ‘ll probably end up spending more time doing that than actually writing posts, which will be fun for me, not so much for anyone who wants to read up on what I am up to.

As part of my new blogspace right here, I intend to aggregate my social networking profiles. Over the years I’ve done The Facebook , the Myspace, the Humble Voice and so on. A lot of the time I end up ignoring the friend requests and crazy wall invites, not because I don’t care, but after creating a profile and playing with the layout I always tend to loose the gist of what I signed up for. I’m going to try and change all that as part of my getting more organised lifestyle (more about that in a later post) and get back to the social part of those sites. I might even take the time to respond to your dumb ass email spam survey, but don’t hold your breath on that one.

So welcome to my new site.

I Can Haz Wordprez Blogzzz!!!!

It just seems like there is never enough time. I have a 101 projects on the go and it seems so hard to get any of them completed. I even started creating to-do-lists galore to get organized and then creating lists and checking of tasks became a project in itself.

Crystal’s maternity will be running out soon and she has been putting plans into place to start selling her artwork and setting up a website dedicated to selling prints for nurseries and kids rooms, similar to the beautiful posters she created for Avie’s room. So my priority right now is looking after Avie throughout the day while Crystal can continue with creating her masterpieces. Spending the day with Avie is always a joy, although she is SOOOO busy now, she gets into everything, all the time. You can’t take your eyes of her for 5 seconds or little fingers are grasping for things they shouldn’t be gripping, her favorite activity right now is climbing to tamper with the rubber bumpers we bought for the coffee table corners, which she removes with ease and a big smile. I really must make an effort to get some video footage of her this week to post on her blog as she really is coming on leaps and bounds, not only in getting around physically but being a little chatterbox too. I’ll add it to my ever growing to-do-list.

umm what was this post about again? It seems like I can’t even focus on writing a blog post without getting distracted. although Avie is always a welcome distraction… Ooops there I go again.

In other news another priority project is planning our wedding, I reallllly need to make some UK phone calls and get official invites sent out, I know it is a lot to ask of people to come all the way over here to be part of our little celebration so I will try and get all the arrangements made so everyone can make their arrangements. I don’t even know where to begin! Crystal found a dress that she loves so she is making moves on her side of things now, I need to get the boys all set up.

So this post wasn’t really about 101 projects in the end, more so random ramblings.

[x] Update Blog

It was my birthday yesterday, and Crystal (with some help from Doug, Bea and Elizabeth) got me a Nintendo Wii. YAY! I was so excited, I had no idea that that is what Crystal had been planning to get me. Avie got me some accessories for it too, what a sweet little baby.

We ended up over at Crystal’s parents house and had some beer and a barbecue, on the new barbecue that I put together that afternoon, I’ve started to really love barbecued food since I’ve been in Canada, makes me wonder why barbecuing is not as popular back home. We played some Wii Sports later in the night too which was so much fun!

Avie didn’t miss out on the fun of opening presents and LOVED the book that auntie Karen sent her, she loved seeing herself in the mirrors, and when that got old, she just chewed on the wrapping paper. So thank you to Karen, Shane, David, Carl and Jodie from Avie!

Thank you to all my family for the gifts sent in the box, the jumper is a perfect fit and I have been wanting a new book to read for a while. You all make me and Crystal feel really guilty as we are always so bad and sending our packages, we will send one soon though, we are working on it already.

Back in April we took a trip to Sydney, on Cape Breton island, Nova Scotia. Where much of Crystal’s family live. We drove down there, a good 7+ hour journey, Avie was, as usual, the perfect little traveller and made little fuss on the long drive. We stayed with Melanie, Crystal’s cousin. Melanie’s youngest, Alex, had not long since turned 1, when we were down and he was running around all over the place. It was fun to see a toddler and imagine what Avie will be like at that age. Avie was mesmerised by him! She was also mesmerised by the hockey that weekend, as we watched the crucial NHL game between the New York Islanders and the New Jersey Devils. The Islanders won, meaning that The Toronto Maple Leafs missed out on a playoff spot! Avie was not impressed after sitting watching 2 whole periods.

It was quite a while ago now that we were down there but one of the things I remember most was the drive through beer store! Yes, that’s right drive through alcohol…

Just drive up…

Pick out your poison…

Then, Pick it up at the window and drive away! Hahaha I thought it was so funny, I’ve never seen anything like that before. Only in Cape Breton eh?

While we were there too we got some photos taken of Avie and her second cousins, Alex and Becca. Here is the pic of Avie looking cute as ever.

It was a good trip, and since then we have been down there again, but more about that in a later post.

End of catch up part 1 (April)

I figured it was high time for a blog post. It’s not like I set out intending to be so slack with the blogging, but the majority of my time on the computer is spent working on the T-Shirt site, or working on my immigration situation. But after a couple of productive days on all that kind of stuff, tonight I decided to have some Blog time. So I opened up Blogger and here I am a good 4 hours later, finally starting to write a post.

So where have I been you ask? Well distraction took it’s merciless grip! I actually, yet again, set off working on redesigning my Website/Blog, you know, the one that I never post to anyway. If I spent half the time writing Blogs that I spend trying to redesign my website I’d have quite the biography right here.

It’s pretty funny to look back at my Blogs and see how many times I’ve stated how I am going to start writing more regularly, what makes it funnier is the fact that I’m going to say it again right here… My plan is to write about what I’ve been up to since March over the next few days, 2 trips to Sydney, 3 weeks in England, my best man speech and of course watching my little girl being way too cute.

So stay tuned for my first update tomorrow!

Well another month is almost over, and I thought I should write a quick update to the old blog. I have actually just changed over all the hosting, I’m getting rid of the old photophono tag and just going with paul-lancaster.com from now on. I’ll be updating the whole site sometime soon, so keep checking back.

Well it has actually been quite a busy month, My little princess Avie turned 2 months old, she is growing so fast, it is quite shocking. Parents always talk about how fast their kids grow up and you don’t really appreciate the fact until you witness it first hand. She is so bright and bubbly, she craves attention though and she loves hanging out with Mummy and Daddy. She doesn’t like to be put to bed sometimes, I think because she doesn’t like being in her room on her own and just wants to hang out, she is definitely going to be a sociable little flower.

Crystal and I bought a car, a ‘98 Honda Civic. I have been meaning to take a photo, part of the reason I haven’t wrote a blog is because I was waiting until I had a photo of the car to post, but with the crappy weather the car has been pretty dirty and it’s too cold to go out and clean it. I’ll update with a photo soon though. It’s so nice to have a car, we don’t feel as trapped anymore, it was hard to get anywhere around here without a vehicle. It was strange getting used to driving an automatic at first though, but I have the hang of it now, although I still don’t like it as much as driving a manual car.

My temporary visa expired this month too, I can’t believe it has been a year that I have been in Canada now! It has gone by crazy fast. I have applied for an extension to visitor status, which I’m still waiting to hear back about. The lady at Immigration told me that once it is sent in the post it is taken that it is approved, until Canadian Immigration advise me otherwise. It better all go through okay!!! I took my medical examination too, for the application for permanent residency. I had to head over to Fredericton and go for a check up at the doctor and then for blood tests and a chest x-ray at the nearby hospital. It was a surprisingly smooth and fast process, I was expecting it to take all day but in fact it only took a couple of hours for the whole thing. The only dumb thing was when they asked me about average weekly alcohol intake, I didn’t take into account the weeks when I don’t drink anything at all, I was adding up the average consumption for when I actually drink, which obviously puts my average higher if I don’t take account of the zeros! I hope they don’t think I’m an alcoholic.

Crystal and Avie applied for their passports for our trip to England too. They should be arriving in April. It is so exciting to be going over to see everyone, I miss my family so much, especially since the arrival of little Avie, I can’t wait for her to meet everyone, especially her cousin Jodie who is super excited I’m sure. We also got tickets to see Modest Mouse in London, which is a band that Crystal and I both LOVE. I have a lot to sort out before the trip too, not least getting the speech ready that me an Tim will have to make at Shai and Lisa’s wedding. I haven’t even had chance to think about that yet! It will scare me too much if I do I’m sure.

Well we will be into April in a few hours! My main goal for the month is to get all my immigration forms filled in and sent off. I definitely need to get all that done and dusted before we leave for England, in fact much sooner than that. Well I better go for now. I will try my best to post more often in this coming month and update with some photos soon. Bye for now.

Well it’s been a while since I wrote a Blog …again! So here’s a little update. I’ve been back working at The Source this last month or so, although I will be finishing there soon, as my visa expires, and then I won’t be able to work while we are applying for my permanent residency. It will be nice to be home with Avie and Crystal though and it will mean we have time to work on the T-Shirts. I will hopefully be able to help Crystal out with that somewhat, while I can’t work, or at the very least look after Avie while Crystal works on it.

Avie is doing really well now, we have her on the Alimentum formula, which is a formula where the proteins are broken down to make it easier to digest. The doctor also prescribed her some baby zantac, which helps with her reflux symptoms. She is so cute! She still gets mad when she wants her milk, but most of the time now she is so pleasant and contented. She is reacting so much now too when you talk to her and it’s so much fun watching her develop little skills, like learning to get her hands in her mouth, which she is getting good at now, she is starting to take hold of things in her hands more now too. Here’s the latest photo of her, taken an hour or so ago.

She also has her very own Blog now too at www.avielancaster.com So Crystal and I will be posting lots of photos and videos of her there from now on. It’s almost all set up so keep an eye on it. I am working on my new website too and will be moving my Blog in the next couple of weeks to www.paul-lancaster.com but check back here for updates on that, as it might take me a while to actually get around to it.

LOST is back! In just a few minutes infact so I am off to watch that right now, I can’t wait, it seems like I’ve been waiting forever for it to come back.

In other news I’ve been back at work at the old source that last couple of days. It is a completely different store to what I was used to in Ottawa, it is so quiet all day. It kills me being away from Avie all day. Speaking of Avie, Crystal took her to the doctors today, to get her poor little belly checked out, he told her to buy the Alimentum formula for her to see how she takes to it and if it goes well he will give us a prescription for it. Well she had her first feed, it seemed to go down pretty well, I guess she still has the old stuff in her belly though so right now it is too early to tell.

Eeeek LOST just came on, better go.

Beautiful Avie. This is the latest photo, taken 10.18 am 2nd Feb.