Hockey Day in Canada, eh

Hockey Day in Canada - celebrating with a little pond shinny, in Limoges.

Winterlude 2012

Me skating backwards, Dow's Lake, Winterlude 2012.

Sugar Bush 2011

Brunch at the sugar bush with Nana and G-Paw, including a horse drawn wagon ride and taffy on snow. I love maple syrup... :)

2011-01-16

First skate on the canal this season. Man it was cold. During the summer I delude myself into thinking I'm a half decent skater, but the first time on the blades each winter reminds me that I'm actually quite terrible :)

2011-01-08

The joy of a Canadian winter... the bits enjoying their first skate of the year on a friend's amazing backyard rink.

Twinkle twinkle

C and the two Js went to Alight at Night at Upper Canada Village with a big part of the extended family. Unfortunately Katie was feeling awful, having spent most of the day in bed, so she and I remained home. The boys took a wagon ride, saw the lights and perused the entries in a huge gingerbread house contest.

Mother Nature is a crazy &*(%&*

April friggin' 27th people! Mother Nature is a crazy bat!

Winterlude 2010

I love that my dad comes up for Winterlude every year, and it's even better now that the bits are big enough to keep up (now I'm the slowest skater in the bunch and running out of excuses to lag behind!)

We had a grand time this year, two full days of skating, ice sculptures and Beavertails :)

Snow fun

Katie was at Brownie camp and C was working so little J and I had an only child day. Puzzles, boardgames, bowling, doughnuts and chocolate milk at Tim Hortons, and building a snowman. Snow was perfect, nice and sticky, and the temperature was pretty pleasant too.

Love this little guy...

teeny snowflake

There's a pearl in every snowflake
It's a fortune falling free
and I can't help but believing
That it all belongs to me...

I googled that lyric hoping to credit it properly and Mr Google is unfamiliar with the song... I swear I didn't invent it!

Snowflake on macro. The red background is my new Olympic mittens :)

One last skate

The Rideau Canal Skateway officially closes tonight for the season (in about 15 minutes actually). Weatherman is calling for warm temperatures and rain, so it was inevitable. It was a pretty good stretch this year.

We couldn't resist one last skate (and, of course, a Beavertail.) Goodbye for another year skateway...

(and yes, I'm wearing Katie's hat. We forgot to bring along her thin hat for under her helmet, so she's wearing mine and I'm wearing hers. Might need to get me one of those actually, it's pretty cute on me ;) )

"Winter Carnival"

Today there was a little winter carnival in the bump on a donkey trail village we call home. It was actually pretty lame (a village so close to Ottawa, home of the world's best winter carnival, just can't hope to measure up) but we had fun anyway roasting hot dogs over the fire, throwing rubber chickens at hula hoops (I kid you not) and finishing with a spaghetti dinner.

Sledding

Sometimes it's the simplest of activities that create the fondest memories.

Winterlude 2009

My dad comes up every year for Winterlude. I look forward to these visits immensely, I'm not a huge winter outdoor person myself, but skating on the canal with my dad is always fun (and I get on the blades a handful of times before he comes if I can because he's a WAY better skater than I am and I like to at least try to keep up!). This year all 3 kids skated with us, and the little ones did AMAZING, keeping up (and keeping UP) very well, and skating about 8km in total. Definitely a tradition I hope we continue for many more years to come.

Speed demons

I'm amazed by how quickly the bits have picked up skating. This is really Jonah's first year on skates (he had bobskates before, but those don't count) and only Katie's second, she didn't skate much last year, and this is only her 3rd time on the blades this year, but both are whizzing around the little rink at our community centre like speed demons!

C got them hockey sticks too, perhaps I have a little Alex Ovechkin and Hayley Wickenheiser in the making?

Winterlude set-up

Winterlude officially starts tonight, but it was such a gorgeous day a couple of coworkers and I went down to the canal at lunch, skated (the ice was wonderful) and checked out the ice sculpture preparations. A few more hours and they'll be perfect...

And then there was snow

As if the never ending transit strike wasn't bad enough, today we got 20+cm of snow dumped on us too. Made for an, uhm, interesting drive home...

The (snowy) silver lining

A day with no electricity (and therefore no heat or flushing toilets) and 15+ cm of snow would seem to be the definition of a craptacular day... but not for these two. A day home with mama and papa, lots of snow to play in, grilled cheese sandwiches with the help of a generator, they were in heaven.

You're an evil wench Mother Nature

It's only freaking October, why am I watching a blizzard fall outside? Why is there already 11cm down at 9:30 and still many more hours of storm projected to come? Seriously, this is cruel.

The sap is running

The endless long winter is drawing to a close - the maple sap is running. This old fashioned sap collecting bucket (and many many of its brothers) is still in use at a private hobby farm near Crysler. They were boiling the first of the season's sap when we visited. Ah the smell of boiling maple sap, the promise of sticky sweet treats to come.