HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KATE! My little sister Kate turns 16 today. Kate has grown up mainly as an only child, given that her four half-brothers and two half-sisters are old(er) folks ranging in age from 36 to 23, and have mostly lived in different cities for a good chunk of her life. It must be an interesting childhood for her, having all these siblings and not really knowing them very well, and not really seeing them all that much. We pop in for visits now and then but haven't really been a part of her daily experience.

For her 16th birthday, though, we wanted to do something special, and so I rounded up the group via email and we came up with a plan. Every teenager needs a digital camera, right, so froo suggested the creative idea to purchase it in one city, use it to photograph the siblings in that city giving birthday greetings of some sort, then ship it on to the next city. So by the time it was delivered to Kate in Moncton, it was loaded with images and even a video of people from coast to coast who wanted to make the day special. Although there are six of us, we are only dispersed among three cities, so it wasn't terribly chaotic to organize, and it turned out brilliantly. A sampling:

Calgary:




Vancouver:


Ottawa:


The camera was delivered Friday and I hear it was well-received. See the rest of the images here.  | ¶ 11:12 a.m.