February 2013

It's been a busy month!

Shae is on her junior high cheer team again this year and they had their first competition at the city finals.  Her team practised really hard and performed so well but there was some very stiff competition so they didn't end up placing top three which would have qualified them for provincials.  I would have liked for her to have the experience of competing at the provincial level but that's OK -

 at least it saves me a trip out of town!  Here's their awesome routine.  Shae's in the centre front most of the time and you can tell it's her by her long brown ponytail with blonde tips.

Connor is playing community basketball this year and his team got to participate in a tournament this month.

After the tournament, we headed over to Hawerelak Park to go skating. Spencer joined us too. It had snowed a lot that week which made it hard to skate because you couldn't see the bumps on the ice in order to avoid them so you had to stay really slow.  But it was perfect for snowball fights on ice!

After skating, we went out for dinner, and not to McDonald's, which was rather novel for the kids!

It was my birthday on the 14th and I had a great day.  Jess surprised me with breakfast in bed and he got the kids off to school while I enjoyed my breakfast.  For dinner, he and Shae decorated the dining room with tissue paper flowers, balloons, and lace doilies under the plates.  So cute!

After our dinner, Shae kindly babsat while Jess and I went snowshoeing in the River Valley.

We got to warm up by a fire when we were done and drink hot chocolate and cook some bannock.

Earlier that day, Hudson had decided that he wanted to draw a ninja mask on his face with the smelly markers, which it turns out take a few days to wash off of your skin.

We had a ward Family Winter Festival the next Saturday at a nearby community league hall.  The kids went sledding, played in the snow, and tried snowshoeing.

One Sunday evening, we had a very fancy schmancy tea party with my new gourmet herbal tea I got for my birthday.  The tea was delicious but the kids were more interested in the tea biscuits than the tea.

For Family Day, we went to the Silver Skate Festival at Hawrelak park (except for Shae who chose to stay home and work on her science project).  The ice was cleared this time and it was very smooth and fun to skate on.  I could have skated for hours but everyone else was getting cold.  There were lots of other things to do besides skating.

There was a Cabane A Sucre where girls dressed up as voyageurs poured thickened maple syrup across a trough of snow and handed out popsicle sticks so you could roll up the maple candy and eat it.  It was delicious and brought me back to my days growing up in Ottawa where maple syrup is much more plentiful.  In fact, the whole festival reminded me a lot of Winterlude on the canal in Ottawa.

At home that night, we mixed up some snow (put ice cubes in the blender) and tried making our own maple taffey.  I think I boiled it a bit too long though because it was much stickier and stiffer than it should have been.  But still delicious!

After our treat, we sat in front of the fire and I read the chapter from Little House in the Big Woods where Laura and Mary's family makes maple taffee on plates of snow.

Finally, the last weekend in February, we went skiing at Rabbit Hill, in the River Valley near Devon.  Hudson spent the day with my Mom while the rest of us hit the slopes.  It was a beautiful day and we got in a lot of runs.  Shae is an excellent skiier and Connor is getting really good as well.

This is still Maira's first year skiing but she's come a long way and came away feeling a lot more confident in her skiing abilities.  She was just getting used to the rope tow on the medium sized bunny hill when it was time to go, she didn't want to stop!