january

january 30

so i think we've made the decision to register zoe in the local french immersion school. it's a shame to change schools yet again [she would have been going to toby's school next year, while he will be going to the same middle school as aly] but she's a smart kid and language really seems to be her thing. french immersion means all of her education will be completely in french. rumour has it that she should be fluent in french by the new year. i'm not sure if that's true or not, but i'm pretty sure she has a good chance of being better at french than the four of us and hopefully she won't speak french with a scouse accent like me! originally she wasn't keen on the whole idea until sascha discovered that she thought we weren't going to let her speak english ever again!

the neighbours working hard on making rinks on the pond

we still have plenty of snow here and i'm loving it so far. i'm usually in the depths of SAD by now, but so far i'm finding the dry snow a much happier environment than rainy drizzle. there are an alarming number of kids showing up to school in shorts still. you can really tell the people who've grown up in the cold parts of canada from the rest!

speaking of quirky canada, i was chatting with a guy the other day who was telling me than an important piece of mail has got lost when his wife's car was broken into and her handbag [with a pile of mail] was taken. i was just thinking how un-canadian the story felt when he said that his wife's handbag had shown up on the doorstep one day [no money inside, unfortunately] and that a few days later his suppliers began to call him to tell him that they has received cheques from him. it seems the thief had carefully mailed all the mail!

a spot of geocaching at the base of knox mountain i've discovered that geocaching can either be much easier [cache hanging in bare trees] or much harder [somewhere under a rock in a pile of snow covered rocks!] in the winter in kelowna.

january 8

sleeping beauty's christmas castle [thanks for the photo dani]

it was quite the shock to the system coming back from beautiful sunshine every day to a snow blizzard! it feels like forever since i was home – but i guess it WAS over 5 weeks. disney was great; we met up with dani and toryn and all stayed at the paradise pier hotel with the most beautiful view of california adventure. it was lovely to watch the World of Color show every night in our PJs (and so nice of them to pipe the music for the show to the hotel room!).

world of color

it was a little strange to be surrounded by christmas again - they only began taking down some of the christmas stuff on our last disney day. speaking of our last day or 2 of the holiday, that is when zoe finally decided that trying some new rides wouldn't be so bad after all which really freed us up to do some new things with her. dani, sascha and aly got to do a behind the scenes tour of the Circle D ranch behind Disneyland which they all loved. i finally recaptured my roller coaster mojo. i guess post-pregnancy just didn't agree with me. i had some really great moments running through the parks with either aly or toby keen to get to a ride. i finally got to go on my favourite ride in the world; tower of terror and really enjoyed the new cars land. it's such a treat to find a new ride at disney – let alone a whole new world.

playing with world of color bracelets

while we were hanging out in the sun, we also took the opportunity to finally visit the queen mary; something we'd been meaning to do for years. dani, toryn, aly and i went on a really well done ghost tour of the ship.

christmas with my family was lovely. although I'm very fortunate that my parents and sister have been able to visit us regularly it's so nice to be back in the midst of all my extended daily and seeing the children getting to know them all. We're all planning to meet up again at disney world in november so leaving wasn't quite as difficult as usual.

zoe enjoying christmas

ron, toby, daniel and di

aly with flynn, zoe, toby and eva

i never seem to get the chance to see quite as many old friends as i would like to, but we did manage to go bowling and for a meal with ana, heather and michael and called in to see the dundas family [zoe was devastated to have to leave her new found friends and their house filled with little girl toys!]. we didn't spend too much time sightseeing or travelling in the uk this trip, but did make it to chester and had a couple of lovely meals at bella italia at cheshire oaks where my cousin, daniel works.

walking along the roman walls in chester

the organ at chester cathedral

bowling at cheshire oaks with ana, heather and michael

zoe at bella italia with daniel

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