January 2018

A quick jump to January 2018, just so I could publish this video of Lara:

April 2017

Right then, back to April 2017...

The weather was unpredictable, this is a photo of us having a picnic on 19th April...

But here is the view from the house on the 25th..

Lara's schooling is coming on well, particularly in maths. 47 out of 44:

This is a good picture to show off what the foothills are like at this time of year:

At Easter we were at the trailer for our traditional easter egg hunt, and then some skiing:

And then a walk by the lake that Leo DiCaprio walks across in The Revenant:

I know, I know.. radio silence!

OK, so we are still here! Happy 2018!
I'm going to try and catch up a bit by doing a month-by-month post, bear with me.
Lara is able to find and read this blog now, so I'd better not say anything too bad about her, or post any unflattering photos, or I'll be the first to hear about it.

Late March skiing

Conditions were very nice at Nakiska at the end of March, though as you can see from the first photo, of Lara and Olivia, you could find some bare patches. The girls had taken me to an out-of-bounds area that their coaches had taken them to earlier in the day, and we skiied down the run that had been the first part of the Women's Downhill course in the '88 Olympics.

They had race training on a closed piste, and Brady Leman, the Canadian World Cup Ski-Cross competitor, was there to lend a hand (it helps that his girlfriend was one of Lara's coaches)..

It must have been a good day, it's rare that Lara AND Dan both fall asleep on the way home..

OK, let's catch up. Briefly.

Right, one post in 4 months and 2 weeks, or 134 days, just isn't good enough.
This is supposed to keep non-Facebook friends and family up to date, as well as giving the kids an interesting read once they're a bit older. So, let me bring you up to speed with what's happened since 7th November.
Baba Luda arrived! We had a bit of a wait at the airport, for the best part of two hours, but that was down to the CBSA immigration people taking their time to interview the people in front of Luda in the queue. Once she got to the front of the queue, all the paperwork was sorted out quickly and here she is, for two years at least.
Grandma arrived, stayed for five weeks, and went home again. It was great to be able to show her how we cope with winter, and for her to experience -20C (briefly), stay for a night in our trailer in the mountains, and see all those stars that are visible when you're away from the city. She saw the kids in their skating lessons, and met some of Lara's new skiing buddies. We missed out on skating on the Bow River on Christmas Eve as Lara had a trip to urgent care in Airdrie, after I squashed her wrist while doing our two-man bobsleigh impression on the local sledging hill. No great harm done, fortunately.

Lara turned 9, having a party with a bunch of her school friends at a local crossfit centre, which has an inflatable obstacle course the kids could play on.
On the subject of birthdays, I'll skip forward to March, and Dan's 5th birthday. For the first time we decided to give him a party that he could invite friends to, and they went to a new play centre in Airdrie.

On the Winter sports front, both Dan and Lara are transitioning from Airdrie Skating Club to a different club, 30 minutes drive away in Calgary. So whilst that will be more inconvenient for us, they should both progress more quickly in their new club, and that's what parents are for, isn't it?
Dan has started in the Minimeisters program in the same ski racing club that Lara is in, and he's doing really well. He has a two-hour lesson each Saturday morning with a handful of other 4 and 5 year old boys, and already they have skied down one double-black diamond run:

Lara has competed in one race, at Sunshine, but she missed the Nakiska-based Reitbauer Cup race this years, as it coincided with our week in Mexico in late February. Both kids will take part in the NASA fun race on April 1st, then Lara will compete in a race at Lake Louise on April 2nd.  Her midweek training sessions at Calgary Olympic Park have been and gone now, but she enjoyed them and hopefully benefitted from them. It's a strange place to have a ski hill, very close to the city, and I can't say I found skiing under lights very easy.

Finally, we had a week in Mexico, in the same hotel that we stayed in last year. This week wasn't all-inclusive, unlike last year, but we stopped at Walmart on the way to the hotel from the airport and stocked up, and we had a room with a great view over the bay, and the hotel's entertainment area, so we were able to watch the evening's cabaret without paying extra!
We all went whale watching this year, and it paid off, with a mother and baby humpback jumping about close to our boat for 20 minutes.

Oh, and Olga and I incorporated a new business - Rover RV Inc. - at the start of February, which hopefully means we'll start renting out our motorhome and trailer over the summer. Watch this space...