"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.

Whimsy

Part of why I love this town - you never know what you're going to find. This is one of the many (many, many) statues around Parliament Hill. Why is he carrying a red balloon? Nooooo idea, but doesn't he make you smile?

(PS - the statue is of Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville)

Sledding

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

Plague

A week where every one of us got sick, but each in a different way. Tummy bug, upper respiratory bug, fever, exhaustion, we're tired of being sick and sick of being tired.

Obama Day in the Capital

Mr Obama, possibly the most popular American president of my time, descended on Ottawa today for perhaps the shortest state visit ever. I work 1 block from Parliament Hill (you can see both Parliament and my office building in this picture) and today's visit was sooooooo much different than when Dubya came by 4 years ago (that visit was horrid, tens of thousands of protesters, traffic nightmare!) Today was so much calmer, perhaps 1,000 people on the hill clamouring for a peek, however slight, of the new president. I heard the helicopters (I'm still not sure exactly what they were doing - following the motorcade? We don't do stuff like that for our elected leaders...) but could see neither the motorcade nor the president.


The picture shows the RCMP closing off Metcalfe St at Queen, part of the safety perimeter for Mr Obama.

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.

Happy Birthday

My honey's birthday. A simple evening at home, with cake.

Handmade rules!

Katie decided she wanted to hand make all 24 valentines for her Brownie troop (that's my girl!) We lifted a cute design, simplified it a bit and assembly lined 24 of these cuties in an evening. Pretty proud of my girl!

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...

A new direction

I give up on the photo a day concept, it was getting tired, it was stressing me out and it was starting to feel like a job. So I give myself permission to quit.

I'll still blog, heaven knows I've blogged in one form or another for more than 5 years, I can't imagine stopping completely. But I'll blog about whatever strikes me, whenever I feel like it. No commitments, no pressure.

Stash building

Fabric is just as much fun to buy and hoard as scrapbooking paper :)

Sweet sister

Katie decided to make little J breakfast in bed. She's such a sweet little thing. He enjoyed it too.

Visiting

A wonderful dinner and a lovely evening visiting.

Still life with cranberry juice and antibiotics

My life today (and for the next 10 days)

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...

Waiting...

Spending a lot of time these days waiting in the van... waiting for C to cross the bridge, waiting for traffic, waiting for the kids, waiting, waiting, waiting.

My new watch

It's really heavy, but it's gorgeous. I finally had a jeweller make the wrist band smaller so I can wear it.

Shiraz!

Do you see a theme here? Perhaps there is one type of wine we prefer? It's true, I'm very much the type that when I find something I like I keep going back to it time and time again, and Shiraz is my favourite red wine (Merlot is a close second, and I like Cabernet Sauvignon too)

PollyWorld

She loves these things, even if the cats think their shoes are tasty treats...

Papa's Girl

She's definitely a papa's girl. She was pouting about something Jonah said, but a cuddle from papa makes everything all better.

Our fridge?

C was cleaning out the fridge, so I snapped a picture of it. Nothing I do fazes him anymore :)

Tradition

It's a small tradition, and a new-ish tradition, but we eat Chinese food every new year's eve together. Until the bits are older we probably won't really do any NYE celebrating, but this is something special for us to enjoy together.

More family fun - this time a birthday

My eldest nephew turns 25 on Jan 3, but we celebrated his birthday today because it's his last day in town. He lives in the states, and this is the first time I've seen him in 8 years! He's changed :)

Hairdresser to the stars

James, Katie and Jonah were playing hairdresser (which thankfully only involved the spray water bottles from the Pixos set instead of scissors or other scary things). James styled Jonah into a faux-hawk, then took this picture. I love how his eyes are almost exactly the same colour as my sweater behind him!

Show me the coffee!

Yes, I'm still obsessing about my under-filled cups of cappuccino. This Tim Horton's is close to my parents house, 4 hours from the various Tim's that I generally complain about. Obviously a chain-wide issue...

Where a kid can be a kid...

We had a few hours to spare today while my parents were working (and my brother and his wife had to rush home), so we had lunch at Chuck E Cheese. Decent pizza, and ski-ball, my favourite game ever!

Boxing Day

Spent boxing day with my family (well, and driving 4 hours to get to my family). My brother and sister-in-law played Monopoly (monotony) with my kids. Not my favourite board game but they had fun, then we had a big dinner and tons of presents.