You’ll also see more photos of our most recent engagement shoot with Julie & Chris…

Here’s just a few photos of our little guy at 3 days and 6 days!

Justin and I want to give a big shout out to the nurses and doctors at the Guelph Genereal Hospital.  They were so amazing during our stay there.  We also want to thank so many of you for your lovely comments and for loving Eli already…

What I DID want to share with you today is a photo I took of my new twitter page design.  This may or may not be a glance into our new branding!!

If you’re a tweep and love to tweet, you should follow ME here and JUSTIN here.

If you’re anything like me, you haven’t been informed simply because you haven’t needed it or known anyone whose needed it.  Well, that changed last Saturday when I met this young girl named Alysha.  She is a 6 year old girl who was diagnosed with Leukemia at age 4.  Long story short, Alysha has gone through chemo, radiation, the whole bit. Last year she had a stem cell transplant from a cord blood donor at Sick Kids. It didn’t ‘take’ like the doctors wanted, but it put her in remission and she has stayed in remission since then!  And as of now, she is actually doing fantastic. (Thanks God!)

Anyway, I have a friend Lauren who messaged me about taking photos for a blood clinic she was running in honour of Alysha.  It was going to be their 3rd clinic but had no photos to show of the previous events.  I said “yes” with the thought that “it’ll be great to help them out”.  Well, needless to say, my eyes were opened to the need of these donations… and with the upcoming birth of Eli, I realized I needed to inform myself a lot more about donating the cord blood.  Even though, it is way to expensive for most of us to store our own baby’s cord blood stem cells, I also know that if our little guy needed some of that in the future I’d be real glad that I donated…

To sum it up, I learned that donating blood is really not a “horrible” procedure.  I had thought that for so long.  But after asking many questions and seeing so many people do it that day, my previous thoughts/fear went away.

Thanks to everyone who came out to give blood… I’m sure it matters to people like Alysha more than we could possible know!

Here’s Alysha showing us her dance moves!

Alysha & her sister Amy helped the nurses… it was so cute to see how seriously they were taking their “job”

Yummy snacks provided for everyone donating. I may have had some baking… maybe.

It was a big deal for me to see everyone giving away their blood… but for Alysha it’s such a common thing.

Here’s Amy holding all of Alysha’s beads.  Every bead represents a “procedure” that Alysha has gone through.

So inspired by this man who’s given blood 25 times!

I think I ate enough chocolate eggs that morning!

Here is my friend Lauren just about ready to donate

me and the sweetie

This photo makes me laugh!  Alysha: “No Justin you can’t have anymore chocolate”.

Lauren & Sarah… the amazing girls who helped put this clinic together!

This is Sharon Delisle.  She works at the Guelph Blood Donor Clinic and can definitely help answer any of your questions (519) 837-4564.   She was so awesome in answering all of mine!

Alysha, Mark, Amy & Karen… what a lovely family

Thanks to Lauren, Sarah, Alysha & family, and the Guelph Blood Donor Clinic for letting me be part of this special day!

If you’d like to know more about blood donation, bone marrow donors and cord blood donors than you can check out their organization: Operation Alysha.

We have our own APP… and it’s free!! Justin & I have been working on this for awhile now because we wanted all of our iphone / ipod touch clients to be able to download this app so that you can share our photography with your friends and family.  I’m sure you’ll find yourself somewhere on the app… which makes this such a convenient way for you to show off your sweet photos

Let me share a few photos of the actual app.

1. this is my iphone with our app on the first page … When you open it, you’ll see the HOME page.

2. I am so happy with our PHOTO page.  The people at SMUGMUG really help make this page GREAT! …. And the BLOG page (so you can read our posts on the GO).

3. There’s also a VIDEO page & a MORE page (which includes our twitter feed and facebook fanpage).  You can download it to see more of those

4.  And here’s a screenshot of the itunes store… (you’ll notice that I only have $0.01 in my account, but that’s OK, the app’s FREE!) ** You can click on the image and download yours today **

Lastly I must thank 2 people: Justin (myownphotoapp.com) and Adrian (Visual Though Communication).

Of course this was Justin’s idea (from last APRIL), but he couldn’t have done it without our developers at Visual Thought Communications, especially Adrian.  So THANK YOU!

** Also for you PHOTOGRAPHERS out there, Justin & Adrian worked really hard to make this app customizable for any other photographer who would like to have their own app for their clients to share with their sphere of people (at a way lower price than it would to have yours done on your own = sweet).  Head on over to myownphotoapp.com, where you’ll find more info on how to do that!

I had many people questioning why I wanted to throw the party or why I’d want to even know the sex of our baby.  ”Keep it a surprise!” they said.  But… there’s something in me that really wanted to know and to prepare.  And so we asked some of our friends and family to join us for a GENDER REVEAL party on Saturday.  There were a few steps that had to be taken to keep it a secret (mostly from ourselves).  Here’s what we did:

Step 1: At 19 weeks, I had an ultrasound and the technician sent the important information to my midwife.

Step 2: My midwife put the gender of the baby in a SEALED envelope.  (It was so hard not to look in the envelope… but I knew it would ruin the whole surprise!)

Step 3: I then gave the sealed envelope to Diane Tavares from Have Your Cake and Eat it Too.  Her job was the most important… she had to make a FABULOUS cake, and the icing INSIDE the cake would be the colour of the gender of our baby (pink or blue).

Step 4: We invited all of our amazing friends and family.  But no big deal if you couldn’t make it, because Justin setup a LIVE feed which streamed during the night so that our far away friends and family could be part of the surprise too!

Step 5: PARTY TIME!!  Everyone who was invited came dressed in blue or pink, depending if they thought we were having a girl or a boy.  Justin & I both thought we were having a boy… so we dressed in blue!  (I’m still shocked that we were right!)

Step 6: CUT THE CAKE

We had the best night ever.  We didn’t know whether it would be as exciting as we had hoped… but it was.  And everyone who was there made it so special for us!  THANKS AGAIN!  Here are some photos of the night:

The main event: Our CAKE!

Ustreaming LIVE to friends all over including my sister Amy in Australia!

The ICING was BLUE!!!!! It was such an amazing moment

Justin & I just minutes after finding out we were having a BOY!

Photobooth FUN times…

My crazy dad and lovely mom (drove all the way from Timmins to find out with us!!)

Here’s a familiar face… Christine & I holding our baby colours.

Me and some lovely ladies… and I’m the only one who’s actually preggo!

Suggestion:  If you’re wanting to find out the sex of your baby, but would still LOVE to make it special…. Consider having one of these parties.  SO FUN!

Call me sappy (or maybe it’s the hormones from the pregnancy! ha!), but every time I see a montage of medal deserving clips to the tune of “I Believe”, or see an athlete succeed in the sport they’ve been training in — SO many emotions well-up inside!!!  I think it’s the fact that the medals they’re collecting for themselves are a part of our Canadian heritage as well.  And it’s also the inspiration these athletes give because they are so EXCELLENT in their sport. This is their thing.  This is what they’ll be known for.  It makes me think of what I will be known for…

Anyway, this afternoon as I spent the day on my computer in front of the TV watching the ladies’ snowboard cross qualifications through to the GOLD medal winnings of Maëlle Ricker… I couldn’t help myself but yell ALOUD.  Mr. Reu freaked a little, I may have shocked myself as well but I couldn’t help it!  I have a hunch that as these Olympic days continue, my Canadian PRIDE may get out of control

GO CANADA GO!

That’s it.  Really… it’s that easy.  If you want to be one of my wedding couples next summer, I’m sending you a little early Christmas gift by giving you 15% off (but only to the first 5 to email me).  Promotion deadline is December 1st. I have only a few select dates still available so contact me soon!

That’s pretty exciting, I’d say.   So if you were sitting on the fence deciding when or if to book… jump right off and send me an email!

And now….. for some photos.  I had the privilege of doing a very last minute wedding ceremony for a lovely couple this past weekend.  When Afzia from Style & Elegance Wedding and Event Coordination emailed me on Monday desperate for help… I was glad to be available.  I had never been part of a traditional muslim ceremony before, and needless to say I learned a lot about Qayum & CJ’s family and culture in just a few short hours.  Even after the ceremony was over, Qayum’s parents insisted that Justin & I stayed for some (very spicy) indian food After every bite, I was looked at for approval “out of 1-10, how would you say you liked it?” asked his father! HA!

Thanks Afzia for the oppurtunity!  Here’s a few of my favourites of the couple:

CJ was stunning in her pink dress!

the handsome groom – Qayum

Before the bride joins the groom at the front of the room, she sits at the back with some of the women.  Then the groom brings her up the aisle.

I still can’t believe these were taken in the basement of a house.  We managed to get a really dramatic look with the little light we had!

Congratulations again to you two and your new family!

Yesterday, I dropped by theWeddingRing’s new office / loft / cool place to take photos and picked up my copies.  Of course I am so thrilled to see my photos published that I needed to share them with you!

all of my photos from the Bride’s Ball were all over the magazine as well

There you have it.  A little of bit of GREAT news
I hope you have a fantastic and warm weekend!!