Sledging or Swimming?

We've had some snow here on two occasions over the past two or three weeks, but somehow we never managed to go out sledging. Last weekend the snow started falling on Friday afternoon, and by Saturday morning there was a good covering of 4 inches or so. Lara's ice skating lessons were postponed - nothing to do with the snow, they'd had a break-in at the rink - so I was fully expecting to have to deploy the sledge, and started researching on the web the best local hills.  However, Lara decided she would prefer to go swimming, and neither Olga nor I had taken her swimming since we'd come back from holiday, so we headed to the local pool. Lara did want to walk into Bury through the snow, which took half an hour, and the snow was already turning to slush along the roads and footpaths, the temperature was at least 5 degrees C, and it seemed that sledging that afternoon might be a wet affair.

The swimming pool was almost empty, given it was a Saturday morning, probably most of the kids had chosen sledging over swimming. It was the same pool where I'd learnt to swim 30 years ago, which was a sobering thought, as it was the first thing I could easily identify as being achieved that long ago. I'm not sure very much had changed at the pool since then! The water was warm though, and Lara has expressed an interest in swimming lessons, which is something we've had on her list for a while now, and really should try to squeeze into her packed weekly schedule.

By the time we had a McDonalds  dinner, and done some shopping to replenish her school uniform supply, it was mid-afternoon when we got home, and the topic of sledging never really came up. I took Danny and the dogs for a nice long walk in what was left of the snow and Lara just chilled out for the afternoon. 

Grandma came over for a sleepover that evening so Olga and I could go out for some liquid refreshment, and by the morning almost all of the snow had melted. 

Lara of course had the chance to play in some snow the next morning, as she had skiing lesson #2 of her Level 5 course. She's a skier of extremes at the moment, she either comes down very slowly, but correctly, or switches her skis from "pizza" to "chips" and comes straight down very quickly, although she is able to stop (she just neglects to steer).  The instructor was happy with her and the rest of the group of 6, and it should be more of the same tomorrow morning.

A very good day for Lara

Lara's had a very good Sunday; this morning she resumed her skiing lessons after our holiday, it was leeson one of Level 5, and this one would be longer than all her previous lessons - one hour 50 minutes instead of 50 minutes. She had been introduced to the main slope at Chill Factore in her Level 4 lessons, but sometime during Level 5 she would be taken to the very top of the slope.  As it turned out, the instructor had a look at the six kids on the lesson making a few runs from the first "stop" on the main slope, and was obviously happy with what she saw, and before half an hour was up, they were all heading up to the very top!
Here's their little group following the instructor like ducklings, Lara's bringing up the rear, wearing the all-white suit:

She fell a couple of times, but some of those were down to trying to avoid one of the kids in front who had fallen, and there is no shame in falling on your first runs down that slope - it's steeper than it looks in the photo!

Then tonight, as usual for a Sunday night, it was time to practise her reading before school tomorrow, and she read the two books she'd been given, one of them with no help at all from me, other than confirmation that she had got certain words right, and she read almost every word in her second book, only stumbling over difficult words ending in "y", as spelling those out phonetically doesn't help so much, but it was certainly her best attempt so far at reading.
To cap it all off, after we'd finished the second book, she asked "Can I go to sleep now?"

Days don't get much better than that... :-)

A very quick catch up - welcome to 2013

Life with two children, two dogs and two full time jobs is proving very busy indeed, hence the dearth of posts on here. By the time we've finished a day's work (sat in front of a laptop) then made tea, walked the dogs and got the kids to sleep, it's time for a beer or a glass of wine and flop down in front of the TV, so just at the moment the blog is playing second fiddle!

But, you do deserve a little update. I'd like to go into more detail but, well, we'll see. One day maybe!
In order to keep this brief, so I can go and have said beer, I'm going to use bullet points, and they are in no particular order:

• We loved our holiday in Canada (more updates to follow, I promise. And photos - lots of photos)
• Lara had the title role in her school nativity play - Whoops a Daisy Angel, and once she'd got her first line out of the way, she settled down and was very confident, even helping the other kids with their lines and where they should be standing on stage; she knew her part and all the other parts, it seemed. We were naturally very proud of her:

• She is still having skating lessons, skiing lessons resume next Sunday, she's at Level 5 now and is on the main slope at Chill Factore.
• She also attends drama and musical theatre classes on a Monday after school, and after today, will be adding 90 minutes of dance to this, on Wednesday after school. That's 30 minutes each of tap, ballet and jazz.
• Danil has had his two front lower teeth for ages, and over the last month or so his top two front teeth have started to appear, and will be with us in full soon. 
• His sleeping hasn't been great for the last 6 weeks or so, almost every night one of us has had to get up with him; almost certainly it's his teeth that are bothering him, though he did have an upset stomach in the run up to Christmas. It was significant that a couple of nights ago he went through the night without one of us getting up, for two nights in a row, though last night we were up again at 4am. He likes to watch BabyTV, a Sky Channel aimed at - you guessed it - babies. It does soothe him, and he can watch it for an hour in silence before dropping off. We know because we've watched him watching it at 3am. It's channel 623, you should try it. Plus it has no adverts!
• Yesterday he made his first meaningful progress in crawling forwards. Life will not be the same again now he's properly mobile.
• He had his first haircut on Friday afternoon, Lara's never had a haircut in a salon, so this was a family first, and we all trooped in to watch.

• We're still not unpacked in the house yet - we might have to accept that we'll never properly unpack everything before it's time to move out again.
• The dogs are being themselves, Jackson still gets too excited when he sees, but cannot sniff, another dog and he proceeds to nip Mishka in frustration, who nips back. They have had their salon time this weekend though, the downstairs bathroom here proving to be the perfect dog grooming room:

And finally, just a nice one of the family taken on New Year's Day...

Canada Blog

I've decided to start a new "sub-blog" to deal with Canada-related posts, starting with our current trip to activate our visas. There is a link to it on the left of this blog, or click here.

6 more sleeps - till our holiday!

Olga and I are still beavering away at work, but Lara finished school for the Christmas holidays today. My last work day should be tomorrow (fingers crossed) and Olga will finish on Friday. However, exciting thoughts about our holiday are creeping in, such as thinking about what to pack when the predicted temperature in Calgary on Christmas day is a low of -27 deg C and a high of -7. On a warmer note, I've just been looking at the brochure for the events running at the hotel where we're staying for three nights over New Year: Christmas & New Year activities.
I daren't think about any more parts of the holiday yet, it's distracting me from finishing work that needs doing first!
More posts about what the us and kids have been up to before we leave, I promise!