Happy 10th Birthday, Natalie!

Taking to the Slopes

When we got home, we were happy to find out that the local ski hill had reopened after having been closed for at least 7 years. We are not really avid skiers, but do enjoy the sport, although not enough to make us want to drive really far really often to ski, like some of our friends and relatives do. This ski hill near us (a mere 5 km south of town) is really just perfect. I learned how to ski there when Rachel was little - every Sunday afternoon myself and a few of my girlfriends would take to the slopes with our instructor (small town, she was another friend!) and ski. We took Rachel once or twice when she was about 4, and John tried snowboarding, but when the ski hill closed, that was it.

While living in Australia, though, people naturally asked about skiing, and we had to say, sheepishly, that we don't really ski, and Natalie would pipe up that she had never even been on skiis: how embarrasing. We knew we had to do something about that, so, seeing that the ski hill was now open, we all went on Sunday. We've had nice weather since we got back, lots of sun, only one really grey day (see previous posts), but enough snow for skiing. Sunday was warm (probably -8) and sunny, and the skiing was great. I was surprised at how quickly I became comfortable again on skiis. John, well, as you all probably know, he can do no wrong when it comes to anything that has to do with sports, so he was good to go from the start. But it was the girls that I was most impressed with. We started out on the bunny hill and John and I showed them how to stop (the most important thing about skiing!), then Rachel and I took off to the t-bar and down the easy runs. She was confident, and skiied well. Natalie was just fearless! She must have known instictively how to turn, and kept wanting to be in front of me so I wouldn't hold her up!








Here's the link: http://www.skithevalley.ca/Madawaska-Ski-Area.html

...in the sun!

What a difference sunshine and a blue sky can make! I took these pictures today, Thursday, 8 January at the same time of day as yesterday. This first one is the same view from my back porch steps:














These next two are pictures of Lake Kamaniskeg, the lake that Barry's Bay is on:

January...

This quick blog is mainly for the benefit of our Australian friends. I promised you I would send some pictures of winter at home when I returned, and here they are. These photos were taken at 11:30 am, Wednesday, 7 January, 2009.
This is from my back porch steps:














From the front porch looking across the street (yes, that is Casey Street between me and the houses across the road - it's covered in snow, although the plows came by a couple of hours ago!):














And the view from my kitchen window:














Enjoy!!!

Home!

We spent New Year's Day with John's family; some of his brothers and sisters and their families were there to welcome us home and we had a nice New Year's Day dinner. We drove up to Barry's Bay on Friday, 2 January; the house is the same as we left it, and I'm now in the midst of unpacking, sorting, and re-organizing. John and the girls have gone back to school (as of Monday, 5 Jan.) and are settling back in well. Rachel and Natalie were very excited to get back to their own bedrooms and to rediscover all of their belongings.

After a year of enjoying everything Australia has to offer, it will be fun to be Canadian again (cheaper gas/petrol, the cold, and snow!)

Toronto and New Year's Eve

We made it safely to Toronto after our late night flight from LA and our morning flight from Detroit. We had no trouble getting through customs, they didn't even look into one bag, and we were out of there within half an hour. We had some family members meeting us at the airport, but we got through before they arrived and so we walked out to no smiling faces and waving arms, just the emptiness of thinking, "geez, we've been gone for a year and no one's even here!!!" My brother soon turned up, and my mother, sister and niece (Sophie was keen to see her girl cousins again.)

We spent the afternoon and evening at my parents' house, and my whole family was there, which was nice. Even with a my small family (one sister and one brother, two in-laws and 5 children between the three of us, all living withing five hours of Toronto) it is surprising how infrequently we can all be together. We had a nice New Year's Eve dinner, and finished the evening with champagne and oysters. They were good, but not quite like the Clyde River oysters we had in Australia!

Happy New Year 2009.

Los Angeles

We left Sydney on Monday afternoon, after being seen off at the airport by John's sister, Bernadette. We had a short flight to Fiji and a brief wait at the airport - I forgot just how humid it could get there! We arrived at 6 in the evening, and it was dark, but hot and humid! Wow. The flight to Los Angeles was good. There were over a hundred empty seats on the plane, John was by himself in a row of four, with the row empty behind him. So as soon as the seat belt light went off Natalie went to sit with John and used the three extra seats for sleeping, and Rachel and I had the three seats to ourselves. I slept a bit in my seat, and Rachel stretched out as much as she could in the two seats, and slept for about seven hours! I couldn't believe it. She was in a really good, deep sleep, too.

We got to LA in the early afternoon of the same day, as we crossed the dateline and got back the day we lost going to Australia. We just stayed at the hotel that day, resting and making use of the spa-like facilities. The following day, this would be Tuesday, we spent exploirng LA. We got off to a later start that we had hoped, due to the jetlag, and got into the city, by train, at about 11 AM. We went straight to Hollywood and walked along the Hollywood Walk of Fame, reading all the stars on the sidewalk (I'm surprised there aren't more collisions among the tourists - almost everyone was walking with their heads down!) and taking pictures of some of the stars we recognized! We say Grauman's Chinese Theater (http://www.manntheatres.com/chinese/) and the Kodak Theater (http://www.kodaktheatre.com/profile.htm) and saw the Hollywood sign on the hill, albeit from a distance!




























Our main destination of the day was the American Girl store. For those of you that don't know of American Girl, it's a well-marketed 'toy' for tween girls, where you can buy a beautiful, well-made doll that looks like you. So you can get almost any combination of eye colour, hair colour, and skin colour. They also make historical dolls based on life in a certain era. For instance, Rachel owns Felicity, a doll from (I better get this right) Williamsburg in 1774. She has a best friend named Elizabeth (who Natalie has - and these two dolls do resemble my girls). They also make a New Mexican doll named Josefina, Kaya is the American Indian doll, Molly is from the 1920's, and the newest, Julie is the daughter of hippies in the 1970's. I think you get the picture. Anyway, all these dolls come with their own story books, and you can buy beautiful clothes and other accessories, including furniture, for the dolls. At the stores they also have a hair salon and hospital for the dolls, and a portrait studio, and a cafe. It can all be a bit much (especially for the menfolk), but they've really done their homework and developed a very popular product. I like the fact that in this day and age where there is so much junk out there for tween girls (you all know what I'm talking about) American Girl is pretty good. I'd much rather Rachel play with her AG doll that have anything to do with the likes of Miley Cyrus!!!














So, we had a good couple of hours at the store, John survived it (just), and we went back for one last look at Hollywood before heading back to the hotel and on to the airport for our late-evening flight home.