A few activities of the past few days...

Jasmin desperate to avoid afternoon nap but succumbing to snuggling with Ka Ren.


Grace enjoying Whirl N' Worship, a Christian karaoke DVD with excellent Scripture in song... Who taught her about singing in to mikes? Not us!

Creating a town for her animals... it began with a road for the cars, but that didn't last long! The cars got quickly parked off to the side and the animals took over.

We finally got "warm" weather AND sunshine today! So we hurried outside after lunch to make full use of it. The snow in the backyard had been untouched for months so we had fun tramping out paths to play on. Jasmin came out with us, but immediately fell and got a face-full of snow and so decided inside was a better place to be. Since the sides of the paths were at her cheek level, I'm not too surprised she chose inside!


One of the many things Grace learned from Peep (www.peepandthebigwideworld.com): "foot" prints. it took me a good while to convince here that only prints made by feet are footprints! So we made mommy prints and Grace prints to illustrate :o)

Today was my very first proper play in the snow this winter. It felt SO good :o)

I was all excited! Here I was finally out for a walk in the snow! Not too cold, nor too windy, with gently falling snow. Jasmin lulled to sleep in the stroller and Grace chattering away about everything she could see. We had been too long stuck in the house from bitter cold and snow-filled sidewalks. It felt so good! Off we were to buy some cheese on sale. I began composing a blog entry in my head about it...

But by the time we were ready to set off back... I was having quite a bit of nerve pain down my leg. we hung out a bit to see if it would go away. It didn't. So I had to admit defeat and call Michael to come get us. :( I guess walking with a stroller through a bit of slush and snow is too much for it. Sigh. It has been doing SO very well... I guess I must wait patiently a bit longer to be going outside regularly with the girls. Too bad, Grace does love it so. Me too for that matter!

Better it happened now though, as soon we are going with the youth to Winterlude to skate... something I guess I won't be doing this year. Yet another year to wait before I get to skate on the canal.

Our return trip to Ottawa was delayed by one of the storms, but it went much smoother than our trip down. We drove up through New Brunswick and Quebec this time, taking an over night break near Woodstock with Uncle Gavin. We had fun with our GPS, as its maps are old, and the highways are new... it showed us driving through the middle on nowhere most of the way! Still, it was useful as an MP3 player: we played Beethoven just about all the way home, trying to listen to all Michael had downloaded to see which ones we wanted to keep! That's nearly 16 hours worth!

We only had 3 days at home before setting off again. This time to Montreal in response to a preaching invitation we'd set up ages ago. It was a good weekend with old and new friends, but took a toll on us - we've been a little out of sorts... of course, not Grace and Jasmin...
Their favorite pastime with Daddy when he's not ready for work yet... they certainly enjoyed Daddy being more available for play!

And lastly, evidence that Mommy is not quite with it.... perhaps measuring things would be a good idea?

Finally more Christmas update! A grouping of misc. photos of Christmas events....

One of our festive meals built around Uncle Jamie's gift to Imma, the making of fabulous cheese balls. Was it ever good!

As you can see, very different from our usual Asian fare... We all really enjoyed it, but especially Jasmin missed eating rice...
Our last evening, we ate out at a chinese restaurant, and Jasmin scarfed down a whole bowl of plain rice before the rest of us had even finished ordering! It was like she couldn't get it in fast enough, using her hand as well as her spoon! Having eaten a whole bowl of rice didn't stop her from eating more once we were served either!

We were treated to true Haligoian weather: we had a few really mild days to explore the yard a bit, and also two huge snowstorms where we had to barricade the door against the wind at night and shovel our way out the door in the morning! Of course, we lost power twice for a day at a time during the storms, adding to the experience. We could enjoy it as adventure because Liz's parents have an oil stove that doesn't require electricity. It was a lot of snow - when looking at these pics, remember there was no snow to speak of before the storm!

Grace was excited to see so much snow - until she got totally flummoxed trying to move around!


As the snow came with high winds, it piled up so much around the front end of the van that it looked like someone had driven into a snow drift... needless to say, Uncle Jamie was quite pleased to have Michael around to help with the digging out! This picture is after we had cleared away a fair bit.

Grace got some twistable crayons from NiNi... her accuracy in coloring improved impressively!
Some of her coloring made it onto our Christmas tree...
but Jasmin had fun re-sticking the stars, so none of them actually are on the tree in the picture! We did a tree like this so we wouldn't be constantly badgering the girls to not pull things off. Paper stars and hearts are much more child friendly :o) And, interestingly enough, the letters were not peeled off and restuck like the hearts and stars! So we were all happy.

One afternoon, Aunty Ruth took us to see the train village done by one of her co-workers. The girls were fascinated! At first they were a bit hesitant over the noise and movement of the train, but by the end Grace was trying to drive it backwards at full speed! They had fun pointing out all the different things they could see - especially the animals; grace with names and Jasmin with the apporpriate sounds.
We managed to find a beautiful day and went to the beach for a walk. We couldn't be in Nova Scotia for 2 weeks and not visit the ocean! Grace was a bit awed by the waves, but oh, so excited about all the rocks!! Jasmin fell asleep on the way and didn't wake up until we were ready to go home :o/ It whetted our appetite for a summer visit when we could enjoy the rocks, and sand, and sea!