Natalia’s 29th B-Day Party

Natalia hugging Philip at her 29th Birthday Party

Two Sundays ago (September 9, 2018), Natalia decided to host her own B-Day party (she enjoys hosting a lot)… and IT WAS FANTASTIC! I absolutely love seeing her so happy and cheerful and it means a lot to her when everyone else around is just as happy as her to share her special day with the B-Day girl. 

Photo gallery of the night!

The photo of Natalia and Philip hugging is my favourite and makes me really happy because they’ve been through so much together and them sharing that hug is just so heartwarming. I tear up a bit when I see that <3

Natalia hugging Philip at her 29th Birthday Party
Natalia hugging Philip at her 29th Birthday Party

As for the group photos, those went well! I bounced the Cameron flash off of the ceiling and used the wide end of the Canon f/2.8 24-70mm on the Canon 5D MKiii on Philip’s inexpensive tripod (because I’d forgotten mine). 

The only problem came for the subjects once the “be crazy” photos happened… because SOME OF US didn’t know we were doing silly photos yet! That’s why in the first of the 2 silly photos, only some of us are doing silly faces and the others are acting as if everyone around us was normal (which is obviously never the case anyway haha). 

Funny story: during the candles-being-blowing-out part of the night, Natalia was having a bit of difficulty with blowing out her birthday candles…… So Philip -of course- came to the rescue and blew them all out in one fell swoop/breath. This is after Natalia was trying to blow them out for a solid 10 seconds until she “called a friend”. This was pretty hilarious at the time xD

Philip's about to blow out all the candles
he’s about to blow the candles out in one big breath…

The flowers that I got for Natalia had to be brought over by Mom because they would have been crushed in my backpack or bike panniers. I was able to bring everything else over except for those. I knew they wouldn’t be able to make it on the 10km trip because the 2km trip from the store almost killed them all because it was SO WINDY THAT DAY. Anyway, I got these flowers over other ones because of the vivid, deep blue flower in the middle of the bunch… because Natalia’s love of blue is ever so real! 

Pro Tip: put the bottoms of flowers in a reused milk bag filled with some water to keep the flowers alive for as long as needed
Pro Tip: put the bottoms of flowers in a reused milk bag filled with some water to keep the flowers alive for as long as needed
flowers from store, in a pannier on the back of my bicycle.

Flowers, delivered from the store via pannier on the back of my bicycle

Thanks for helping out with the cake, Mom!

And thanks to EVERYONE for coming out and making this happen for Natalia! It means a lot <3 

Group photo #3

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Ben Durham

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Just an average person on a bike who’s focused on getting more people out of their cars and on to bicycles or electric last-mile micro-mobility solutions!

That, and rooting for active transportation infrastructure upgrades in North America (we need to catch up)!

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