Valentine's Day at the Silver Skate Festival

My birthday fell on a Saturday this year and I decided I wanted to spend the day with my family at the Silver Skate festival. This is a winter festival at Hawrelak Park with skating, cross country skiing, snowshoeing, ice sculptures and all sorts of other activities. We've been there before when there was a Cabane à Sucre but they didn't have one this year for some reason and that was about the only disappointment I had with the day.

We started out in the Heritage village section where Connor enjoyed watching the blacksmithing demonstration and we all roasted some bannock over a fire.

Then we moved over to the kids activity area and we played some ball hockey, tried the ice slides and Connor and Hudson enjoyed some broomball.

Then it was time to strap on our skates and skate around the lake. This is my favourite place in Edmonton to skate because it reminds me of my youth in Ottawa and going skating on the canal.

That evening, we went to the story procession. The story this year was "The Golden Apple" and to start, we made ourselves a torch to carry with us.

Then we listened to the story of the Golden Apple in a warming tent, told to us by the king and queen in the story.

Then, at the appointed time, we joined in a procession where we walked through the setting of the story, full of glowing ice sculptures and people in costume, until we ended up at a tree decorated with golden apples. The golden apples were filled with papers that people had inscribed with sad memories or fears, and the papers were burned when the tree was set on fire and we all watched it burn.

When we got home, I had a two-bite brownie cake and opened presents.

Grapefruit spoons from Shae - somehow in almost 20 years of marriage, we've gotten by without any but I'm so excited to finally have some!

Connor was so excited to hear that I planned to use this vegetable cutter to make noodles out of zucchini.

After dinner, Maira gave me and Shae a tour of her new school that she bought with all her allowance and birthday money she'd been saving up.

And the next night, we went to Spruce Grove to celebrate with my mom and my sister's family.

Maira's 8th Birthday

Maira turned 8 in January - she's growing up so fast, I just wish she would stop! We had fun celebrating her in our family and in our life. She was excited to go rock climbing with some friends so that's what we did for her birthday party. It turned out that her Uncle David and Aunt Laura were in town that week so they joined us at the rock climbing gym. 

Just like for Hudson's birthday, Shae and I collaborated on the cake and built a miniature Maira climbing up a mountain:

On the night of her actual birthday, we had a family dinner. It's getting harder and harder to fit everyone at the table!

She doesn't care for regular cake so I made her a s'mores ice cream cake. Here I am sticking it in the oven for a couple minutes to brown the marshmallows:

She started Learn-to-Figure Skate lessons this month and is absolutely loving it.

She also got baptized in February. Which called for another family gathering - yay!

Here's a picture of me very pregnant with Maira in front of the very same door at Shae's baptism:

And Shae wearing the same dress after her baptism that Maira wore after hers:

Now, back to the present:

We love you so much Maira!