Winter in Ottawa

The boys have continued skiing and are both becoming more confident on skies. Steve enjoyed teaching his adult class and has been out skiing a few other times either on his own or with a friend.

We went to Ottawa's winterlude ice slides on its last weekend. We had fun, despite the odd grumble about the slides being a bit disappointing. Our local sliding hill is more fun, but this set up put on by the city does a good job of attracting people, and the more people get outside the better!! 

Very pregnant belly in the back there having trouble getting comfy in the tube.

Scandinavian style push sleds were a big hit.

No good pics but here's one lot of ice slides, with Tadhg in red on the left.

Siobhan, Brendan and Tadhg's first 'beaver tails'- a big fried mess of doughnut batter and sugar. A walk down memory lane for Steve. 

A few other activities... peddle go-karts, an army obstacle course (that, embarrassingly for Steve, opened late and then required a signature to accept responsibility should a child trip over a tyre or something equally dangerous!) , a 'join-in' zumba stage show and an Inuit display and campfire where we learned from an Inuit man about how to use various animals parts to make useful objects. 

We've also done a lot of sliding this year. Sometimes with the nieghbour kids and their tube slides, sometimes with the Reinhart-Smiths or school friends and their families. Sometimes boys only and sometimes Siobhan tags along and does one or two runs- though this is getting increasingly uncomfortable as the belly expands!

And this delightful snow family greeted us one day when we turned up at our friends' house to visit.

After a couple of warmer weeks, including a couple of bike riding days and a big snow thaw (with resulting flooding of the garage) it was harder this morning to enjoy the trip to school this morning at -15C. I for one didn't put enough clothing on. Brrrrrrrrrrrr!

Just a nice one of the boys watching skaters on the rink.