On London

Like London, Toronto gets mocked for its occasional inability to cope with slightly-more-extreme-than-usual weather conditions. Last week the city fearfully anticipated the arrival of “the worst snow storm in three years”. Offices and schools were shut down in preparation but the storm itself was a bit of an anti-climax. Still, the kids got a day off school so we went sledging again.

Lily’s got her own ice-skates now and I’m trying to take her once a week. Yesterday she seemed to have a breakthrough and started skating by herself without the chair, so I think she’ll be an expert pretty soon.

And this is our new way of cleaning up Harry after a messy mealtime – mini bath! Lily wanted to join in of course.

2 Comments »

Lily and some of her classmates show off their books in the school newsletter.

1 Comment »

[Show as slideshow]

It’s been sub-zero all month so the snow just hangs around. Every few days new snow falls to freshen things up. We’ve got good coats and boots so we’re carrying on as normal. We went on an outing to Toronto’s science museum the other weekend, and I’ve been enjoying some hilariously random snow-cycling.

Comments Off on Snow. Business as usual

Spotted this while cycling to the supermarket on Sunday – according to Wikipedia it’s known as a sun pillar and is caused by ice crystals in the atmosphere.

Comments Off on Sun pillar

Finally this morning it snowed enough for sledging! Lily’s thrill-seeking appetite grew with practice until eventually she was zooming down by herself, and even Harry had a go by himself.

(sorry about all the over-excited chuckling… not just in this video but in general)

Video catch up

Also here’s a load more videos from the last month or two…

Comments Off on Saturday morning snow!

My new year’s resolution is to blog more regularly. Yes, how original! Let’s see if I manage it… but in the meantime here’s the news from December represented in pictorial form for your ocular convenience.

[Show as slideshow]

And some notes:

• There was a bit of snow in mid-December which the cold weather managed to keep frozen for the rest of the month
• We got the house ready for our visiting friends Ben & Lucy and their kids, but sadly their flight got cancelled the day before. Bummer…
• On xmas morning the kids opened their presents live on Skype. In the afternoon Ken & Niki, our First Proper Canadian Friends, invited us for a lovely xmas dinner with their daughter Lucy and Niki’s mum & brother
• Caroline made a great xmas cake which Lily helped design. We have no idea what seismic activity caused the icing to crack next to santa’s igloo… and the wooden board?!
• On boxing day we went ice skating at Dufferin Grove Park (one of my faves). Harry had a short go until he declared “I need a break”, so we brought him a chair
• The unwrapping continued on Lily’s birthday on the 29th with no hint of gift-fatigue. We couldn’t find any pantos so we took Lily to The Nutcracker as a birthday treat instead. There was also a cake but it didn’t turn out right, so no photos of that (still delicious though)
• The next day we met up with some friends of Brooke & Tim’s who Brooke put us in touch with. We went to the city farm near their place and Lily had a lot of fun with their daughter Ruby
• We got invited to a friendly new year’s eve party with lots of kids and dutch doughnuts. We stayed till about 10pm then cycled home to get Lily & Harry to sleep before having bubbly at midnight
• Caroline made another creative cake ready for Lily’s birthday party. Lily’s input was strictly executive
• On January the 2^nd we took 7 of Lily’s schoolfriends up to the local cinema to watch Megamind which I thought was pretty good. We made them all lunchbags but only Harry ate all his. Afterwards we came back home for pizza, Twister, cake and general craziness

Next up I’ll post some more videos cause it’s been a while since we had any. It’s been a while since we’ve had anything in fact… but things are gonna change in 2011, oh yes!

Comments Off on Massive December catch up post

I’m actually writing about something on the same day it happened! This is unprecedented… Anyway, I think the picture explains today’s major event.

…and here’s a pic from when they got their faces painted at the Diageo Children’s Christmas Party, which actually happened 3 weeks ago. Ah well, back to my usual tardy ways.

6 Comments »

It’s also pretty windy up there

2 Comments »

There are two good reasons to dine in the CN Tower’s revolving restaurant on a foggy day:

One: Fewer distractions from the food, which was actually very nice

Two: You can imagine you’re anywhere:

Paris

Hawaii

Mt. Fuji

Underwater

The moon

Mordor

2 Comments »

Friday night is late opening at the Royal Ontario Museum, and after 4.30 it’s half-price. So we checked it out after school the other week.

As it turned out I’m glad I didn’t pay full-price because Lily & Harry spent most of the time dressing up… Harry did come up with a great new look though.

Caroline couldn’t get back from work early enough to join us so we picked up pizza (did I mention we live in Little Italy?) on the way home on a very foggy evening.

[Show as slideshow]

Comments Off on ROM and fog