Shot my first wedding, under duress. Glad for the experience. Sneak peek here http://tinyurl.com/p243q4 Let me know what you think!
05/25/2009
Gorgeous Jonah Bell!
Our friends Colin & Jackie Bell and their son Jonah came to visit last Sunday afternoon and I made the most of the EOS 5D before we had to give it back :)
04/25/2009
Dundee City Council's revised 'Child Admission Policy' for pools
Here is part of a strongly worded letter (yes, another one!) I sent to The Courier (a Dundee newspaper) this morning:Dundee Leisure Swim Centres Child Admission Policy,For a city seemingly encouraging its citizens to adopt healthier lifestyles the high price of admission to Dundee's pools has long been a contentious point for me and many other young families I know. I must say that it came as no surprise today to find out that Olympia is still charging full price for adults and children affected by restricted access under the new stricter Child Admission Policy. With all due respect to the tragic circumstances which prompted the change in policy we must maintain some common sense. As I am no longer allowed access to the leisure (wave) pool with my 6 year old certified swimmer & 16 month old toddler on the same visit to Olympia I inquired with staff if there would be some reduction in ticket price, only to be told that we would still need to purchase standard leisure pool tickets which currently sit at £4.60 (adult), £3.60 (child/concession), and £1.30 (under 3's). That makes a grand total of £9.50 for 1 hour in the toddler pool! As it is we can only afford to visit the pool as a family 2 or 3 times a year. Shamefully, it seems Dundee City Council is intent on turing swimming into an elite sport, accessible only to those who can afford their outrageously high admission fees or monthly fees for private member clubs.
04/18/2009
My Letter to Tim Stevens & the CRA
Here is part of something I wrote earlier this week in response to this letter from Teen Ranch Canada's very own Tim Stevens. It's a summary of my experience as a camper (and staff member) at Teen Ranch Canada between 1992 -1999. Rather long winded, but given the laughable assertions by Canada Revenue Agency I felt it necessary to go into detail...also I felt good to get it all down in writing!"Teen Ranch without Jesus? Who are they trying to kid!!!". This was my initial response after hearing the CRA's assertion that Teen Ranch exists for any reason other than to forward the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
My life would be completely different had it not been for Teen Ranch...or more specifically had I not encountered God as a direct result from camping at Teen Ranch, making a decision to follow christ after hearing the gospel there, and being supported in my early walk as a christian through Teen Ranch's discipleship training bible study program among other things.
It was the sports program, namely horsemanship, which attracted me to Teen Ranch as a camper for the first time in 1992. I can still remember when I was 13, sending away for brochures from many summer camps across Ontario. After a number of lack luster offerings sent from some of the other camps available my mom and I got really excited as we pulled the Teen Ranch brochure it out of its envelope - it looked the business as far as horse riding was concerned - then we saw it there bang on the front page "Teen Ranch in a non-denominational Christian camp" (or something to that effect). We both gave a sigh of frustration - maybe this horse camp was too good to be true. Why did all of the best things always seem to have some sort of catch attached? We decided that I should sign up for a week of camp anyway and just ignore the christian bit for the promise of a great week of horse riding. As it turned out, hearing all about Jesus is hardly a thing you can ignore at Teen Ranch!
It all started my first afternoon at camp. I had registered, met my leader and some of the other girls I would be sharing a cabin with, selected a bunk, said good bye to my mom, and set about unpacking. Our leader gave us each a little hand written note welcoming us to camp followed by a few get-to-know-you questions that she asked us to answer and return if we felt comfortable doing so. The usual questions about family, school, hobbies and interests were followed by a couple that took me aback - "Have you ever been to church?" and "If you died tonight where would you go? How do you know?". They had us considering our eternal salvation right from the get go!
At dinner time that night we prayed before the meal - a first for me. At evening campfire we sang song after song entirely focused on Jesus, God, the Bible, the Christian experience, etc. I can remember looking at all of these shiny happy people clearly sold out 100% about the words they were singing. I made an effort to clap along out of respect for my new friends' beliefs but I just couldn't sing along. It felt wrong because I didn't believe it myself, but at the same time I wanted so desperately to know some of that same joy. Campfires would become a special time for me where I heard for the first time about sin, Jesus' work on the cross, my need for a saviour, God's love for me, etc. Every night staff and special visiting speakers would share testimonies of how God had supernaturally touched their lives, giving them strength to go on despite difficult circumstances. In later years, while I was working at the ranch on summer staff I would regularly invite my family and friends up from the city in the evenings to join us for campfire times. I found that hearing these real life stories of God's faithfulness and provision had a huge impact on my 'unchurched' friends' and family's understanding of God's goodness and His very real love for them.
Every day after lunch our cabin leader shared the gospel in relevant ways with the girls in our cabin during our daily 'devotional' time. This is where it got personal. We were asked to discuss and consider for ourselves all of the things we had heard about Jesus during the campfire times. She would present Bible scriptures for our consideration and help us understand their meaning with practical, real life examples. She taught us about how to pray, how to read the Bible in small chunks each day and extract and apply life lessons and encouragement from what we would read, and for those who had made a commitment for Christ, how to witness to our friends and families. In addition to all this, throughout the course of the day the staff would constantly talk about God in their lives as if it was the most normal thing in the world. I heard story after story of God's goodness and supernatural provision - from real people! I remember the framed posters all around the Ice Corral with pictures of Christian hockey players and favorite bible verses. I remember meeting numerous professional christian athletes from hockey greats, to world series baseball stars, all professing how their faith in Christ had such an immeasurably positive impact on their lives and urging us to follow Christ as well.
Needless to say, all of this had a significant impact on me. It took me a while to get there but one year later, after camping my second summer at Teen Ranch when I was 14, I made the decision to follow Christ. This decision was followed up and supported by discipleship training materials in the form of a correspondence Bible study series which were a great help to me in my early days as a Christian. I was also grateful for the Teen Ranch sponsored weekly regional bible study & fellowship groups run by Teen Ranch staff for other staff members and campers as well as anyone else we could bring along from school, family, neighbours, etc. For a lot of these kids, my self included, this was our first and only regular experience of 'church' in the sense of learning about God, growing from the Word and being supported in fellowship with other believers. For me, in my life at that time, this support was vital to my spiritual growth...and sanity as a teenager!
I went on to serve on volunteer staff at Teen Ranch throughout the rest of my teenage years and early twenties. I am forever grateful for the spiritual foundation that I received as a result of my involvement with Teen Ranch both as a camper, and then later as a staff member. Its now 17 years on from that first night at camp and I am still walking with God. I'm very involved with my local church, as is the rest of my family. I pray regularly for the work of Teen Ranch. Wherever I am in the world I still remember the Ranch on what would be that first night of camp every summer and say a special prayer with much anticipation of the hundreds, (and indeed thousands if we consider the wider reaching impact) that will be impacted with the gospel and the love of Jesus Christ for the first time as a direct result of their stay at Teen Ranch. I will always consider Teen Ranch my spiritual home and I'm so pleased to consider myself part of the spiritual legacy of Mel Stevens and others who founded Teen Ranch Canada so many years ago with the primary purpose of spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ. Long may it continue!
02/26/2009
'Sbeshol Mom' - Jolly Phonics Strikes Again!
My daughter Natalie, armed with her newly acquired phonics skills, has been taking great delight of late in creating her own compositions. Here are some very cute examples of notes I have received in the last week or so. I'm pleased she thinks I'm 'sbeshol' (special).
02/18/2009
You turn your back for one minute...
I left my baby unsupervised for about a minute this morning to go and hang up some laundry (ok, maybe two minutes). Check out the unsupervised mischief she got up to with a Toblerone ;)
02/17/2009
My 25 Things
I just uploaded My 25 Things to Facebook.
1. My great-grand father was the prince of Bohemia. Rick teases me that I'm like that girl from the Princess Diaries, just waiting for the phone call begging me to come and take up the throne of Genovia.
2. My dad was a pilot for Air Canada. He died when I was 12.
3. I went to a performing arts high school, but for drama, not music. I frequently see kids from my school (and class) appearing in movies and on tv.
4. I love trying to spot if a movie was filmed in Toronto. Most movies that seem to be set in Chicago or Boston, or some nondescript American city by the water are pretty certain to have been filmed in Toronto...or Vancouver.
5. I want to learn to play the Ullieann Pipes. I also want to get good enough at fiddle to participate in trad sessions.
6. I love listening to songs on repeat. The song I most recently listened to on repeat was Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes". Love it. LOVE it.
7. I get distracted easily. The first time I heard OFG's [eye] heart I got so distracted (in a good way) that I let my kitchen sink overflow and flooded my kitchen (in a bad way). The first time Rick called me in Canada to catch up while I was away from Dundee for the summer (before we were going out) I got so distracted (in a good way) that I burned the pot of rice that my mom had asked me to watch (in a bad way!).
8. I don't like my name.
9. I missed Colin & Jackie Bell's wedding in Oct 2004 because I was at Ninewells Hospital recovering from breast reduction surgery (courtesy of the NHS). Rick spent most of the evening having conversations like this one: "Hey Rick, where's Annie?"..."Um, she's in hosptial."..."Oh my!"..."It's ok, she's just had a boob job. Hehehe."
10. I love sunsets over the River Tay more than any other sight.
11. Rick loves me because I can geek out. Just this week I joined him and watched with delight as unix time reached 1234567890 seconds from the unix epoch.
12. When I was pregnant with Gabriella I had an aversion to the colour green. It was completely overpowering. I was constantly nauseous and sick for the first 20 weeks. Just looking at a tree would make me hurl. Or grass, especially grass. And that terrible Ribena advert where the berries get all mowed up with the grass and turned into juice. Yuck! Other things that made me spew: Vegetables (any and all, especially carrots), Subway sandwiches (even just walking by the shop in the Overgate or seeing the adds on tv), the smell of JJB pool (which for the record can also be smelled in the adjacent Mothercare). Normally I have a stomach of steel. Before my pregnancies I could count on one hand the amount of times I'd ever been sick (ew, wrong analogy!).
13. I love staying up late.
14. I never speed in town or on country roads. The motorway is a different story.
15. Despite being a rather quick witted child, I believed in Santa Claus til I was 10 years old thanks to an effective ruse concocted by the citizens of Wawa, ON, Canada. I also sucked my thumb until I was 10. I still have my blankie.
16. I thought studying abroad would be fun (it was). My mom was pleased when I chose Scotland over Australia because she never thought I would want to stay forever in such a cold, wet country - nor, she thought, would any potential husbands given the chance to flee to Canada. Sorry Mommy.
17. I don't take hot drinks; coffee, tea, hot juice, and especially not hot water. With the exception of mulled wine, I hate the way hot drinks make you feel all warm and cosy inside. Give me Nestea or an iced caramel macchiato any day.
18. I love writing descriptions for selling things on eBay...then giving them away instead. I love giving stuff away, especially when it blesses someone else.
19. I love eating leftovers for breakfast. I hate eating leftovers for dinner.
20. I like to memorise stuff. Silly poems, rap lyrics, telephone numbers, people's birthdays, german two-way prespostions "an, auf, hinter, in, neben, uber, unter, vor, zwischen", etc.
21. I've been to a Star Trek convention.
22. I love taking beautiful pictures of people when they aren't looking.
23. I like garlic better than chocolate. My favorite garlic oozing dish is escargot.
24. I love cleaning my ears with cotton buds even though you're not supposed to. The guilty pleasure makes it all the more satisfying.
25. I make up stories in my head about people I pass in the street, most of the time without even realising it. I think I've got them all figured out.
So, did you have me all figured out?
- Anne
02/12/2009
Snow Day Today!
So when I posted those old snowy pictures last night I had no idea that it was actually going to snow in Dundee today! Here are some pictures of what we woke up to this morning. Snow Day - yeah!!!
More later on why I don't drive in the snow in Scotland - I know everyone always jokes about "a couple centimetres of snow in Britain and everything shuts down", but there is a good reason for this...I'll explain later :)
02/11/2009
Dundee in the Snow
Here are some shots I took a couple months ago after the first snowfall of the season.
All taken from my own back yard. We get a bit excited over here when it snows cause we never know how long it will last or when we'll see it again! The one of the snowy tree branches is my favorite.
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