Another year wrapped up in the gallery. This was the first year with a digital camera, so the number of photos obviously increased exponentially. But, for some reason, with all the various movements of files over the years, the file folders were a disaster. I had about 4500 photos and video files for the year. But I knew when I started that at least half were duplicates. After I cleaned everything up, I got that down to 1385 photos (less than a third were unique, two-thirds were dupes!). I then curated that to a much smaller 486 active shots in total across 15 galleries. And from that pool, here are my 15 choices to recap the year’s energy and experiences.

February. We bought a new digital camera in February, one of our first “joint” purchases as a couple. It was a Canon PowerShot A80 and it served us well for a number of years. We started playing with it immediately, even finding reasons to go for a walk over to Parliament Hill to take some photos. Here is one of Andrea next to the flame on the Hill.

March. Earlier in the winter, Andrea and I had been talking about moving in together sometime “this” year, but with lots of work coming, and my finishing my degree, and lots of likely other events, we were wondering if it was the best timing. We weren’t in a rush, and we wanted it to go well, so we put it on the backburner while we talked about where in the city we might want to live, what kind of place, etc. Then Andrea’s landlords kicked her to the curb so they could have the whole house to themselves, and our plan to move in jumped forward. Me: So, what does this mean for us moving in together? Andrea: (pause) Well, I’m not moving twice! So we went on a hunt for a new house, just to rent for now. We found one over on Parkdale, just in time for Andrea’s neighbourhood to do a nosedive and her apartment was broken into! Nevertheless, here’s a photo of the new place before we moved in.

April. At Easter, we went home to Peterborough. We had already moved, had our first visitors in the new home, and were enjoying the dishwasher, but we normally went home for Easter. I snagged a shot of my mom with my old cat for nostalgia’s sake.

May. Back in Ottawa, we had some dinner guests, visited the Tulip Festival at Dow’s Lake, had a housewarming, and then headed back to the cottage for opening weekend. Below, you can see Andrea surrounded by tulips.

June. Ah, June. Always busy on its own as summer starts. From our first gallery, we went for bike rides, had a baby shower for friends, celebrated the anniversary of our first date with flowers, and attended a wedding shower for a co-worker and friend. And that was before going to the Eastern Townships to see my best friend Sebastien get married. So you get two photos for the price of one month! The first is the baby shower for Stephan and Myung-hee (for baby Madeleine) and the second is the wedding of Sebastien and Patricia.

July. The month was busy with another wedding as well as outings for fireworks, football games, and picnics. The picnic is with Andrea’s family, along the Ottawa River near Lincoln Fields, while the wedding is for Alex and Jacob.

August. If previous months were busy, August made us downright squirrelly. We had the Malcolm Olympics at the cottage, a wedding shower for Linda, Tim and Emily visited us in Ottawa, we went to see flowers at Dow’s Lake and the Arboretum, and we got to meet Baby Madeleine. But since we were a bit squirrelly, how could I not choose a photo of a panda in a tree?

September. Since our day-to-day pressures of August had tired us out, we settled for only two events this month. We went for a hot air balloon ride, starting off at Carleton University, drifting over Uplands and the airport, and landing in a farmer’s field. We also attended Linda and James’ wedding in the Kitchener-Waterloo area.

October. We have photos from Thanksgiving at the cottage, some autumn leaves out the window of our house on Parkdale, Andrea had a goodbye lunch for a coworker at CIDA, and we carved our first pumpkin for “trick or treaters” to get ready to serve candy in our new house.

November. If I had suggested that life was quiet again, this month proved us wrong. We had small things, sure, but we also had my graduation from Carleton with my Masters of Arts in Public Policy AND attended our fourth wedding of the year, this time for Catherine and Alexandre.

December. It’s the end of the year, I guess. I left Policy Branch to go work in the DM’s office, we had family visit from Peterborough, we had a beautiful first snowfall of the year, and we went home to Peterborough for Christmas.

So, that’s it. Four weddings and a funeral (well, graduation at least).