Mini z's, Telus Park and Dog Sledding

Spring Break has been busy, busy, busy so far.  I've been promising the children they could go on the mini skidoos for ages, but kept thinking of other things to do.. finally I ran out of excuses so off we went.  What a huge mistake that was, Lucy drives a skidoo a bit like she skis...usually looking at what's happening behind her instead of what's going on in front!!! They all had a few laps mostly with me shouting at Lucy 'Look where you're going!!' until she went over the bank, took out a post with some lights on it and nearly tipped the whole thing over.  I ran to the rescue to be met by Charlie coming the other way, also coming to the rescue but had forgotten where the safety switch was and promptly ran me over....Not my best day! This picture was taken before the carnage started!

Yesterday we went to Telus park, a terrain park at Big White with all sorts of things you can do tricks on...a half pipe, a ski cross course which is fantastic fun, but on this day the children wanted to try out the boxes, rails and jumps.....

This morning we went Dog Sledding, which was organised by the school but very kindly donated by the parents of one of the children (good thing too because normally it costs $195 for 20 mins!!!  The children absolutely loved it, they got picked up from a warming hut in the woods before going on a tour and then had an opportunity to play with the dogs and ask questions. 

More sledging!

The boys were really miffed that I didn't post them on their slope outside school, I did mean to but it takes forever to download even the shortest clip and I got bored of waiting.  We're having a morning off this morning though so I've got a bit of time.  The children broke up for Spring Break last Thursday and skied all day Friday, we went to Kelowna on Saturday to an amazing aqua park, called H2O with slides, diving boards, a hot tub, a wave pool, rapids and a surfing pool.  When we got there we found out there was height restrictions on certain things and the children had to be 107m to go on the water slides...no amount of stretching could make Lucy that tall so we had to explain to her why she couldn't go down the slides, as you can imagine she wasn't best pleased!  Ned was the only one tall enough to try out the surfing and loved it, even if it was quite tricky to get the hang of, but his hair's got so long since we got here, at least he looks the surfer dude part, even if he hasn't mastered the surfer bit!
Sunday was Cruz the Blues which we all did together for the first time and so headed over to the far corner of the resort to test Lucy on the very hardest blues, needless to say she skied them fantastically, with only one hitch when Charlie spotted a different route and Lucy followed, out from the bottom of the trees came Charlie going full pelt with no Lucy...she'd got stuck on the top of a 6 foot ledge and he'd just left her!!!!
Here's the sledging....

Spring Break

The children have all broken up for Spring Break and today got their report cards.  As expected Ned and Charlie both did brilliantly, Ned got B's across the board which is defined as Very Good Performance in relation to learning outcomes and Charlie got the same in all subjects except math in which he scored an A which is weird because I always thought he was better at English! Anyway, well done to both boys for working so hard.  Now to Lucy...here are some excerpts from her report card....
-has a hard time staying on task and usually needs reminders
-constantly participates in classroom discussions
-tends to struggle with working in groups and learning how to compromise
-when faced with confrontation has difficulty taking ownership
but the light at the end of the tunnel is...
-has taken great strides from the beginning of the term with sharing and classroom behaviour!!!
Here she is getting ready for the hot tub in her ski socks, slippers and swim suit...butter wouldn't melt!!

Yesterday I took some film of the children outside their school on a sled run they've built.  All the children play on it every recess, lunch and after school and they lovingly tend to it each day, carefully raking and shovelling it after each run! The only condition is that they wear their ski helmets, as a slight deviation from the run and it's head first in to the trees, which surprise surprise Charlie has managed with a very loud thud! 

Charlie and Lucy's teacher has also created a blog about life in their classroom, its got some great pictures on it, check it out at msliebelsclassroom.blogspot.com

We've had 52cm of new snow in the past week, it feels very odd to see no signs of change in the seasons here, nothing changes, it just gets more snowy.  This is the house opposite with some amazing snow formations on the roof...it looks like whipped cream!

The Cliff!

This is The Cliff.  It is a double black diamond and is allegedly the hardest run on the mountain, just the name of it strikes fear into many a skier, although admittedly it doesn't look that scary in this picture but believe me it's pretty steep! It was my goal before we came here for our adventure that I would have improved enough as a skier to get down it without breaking my neck in the process!  So you can imagine how I felt on Friday when I picked up Ned from Ski School to learn that it was him and not me that had been the first member of the Carr family to ski The Cliff.....way to go Ned!  I asked him if he was scared standing at the top looking down and he said that it did look a bit steep but it was too late to back out now!  He also managed to get down without even a stumble... so now the race is on, if I don't get my act together soon and get down it then I'll be beaten by Charlie as well, and that really would be embarrassing!

Farewell to the Kennell Family who made their way back to Blighty yesterday.  We have absolutely loved having you all to stay and do hope you enjoyed your first skiing experience, we will all miss you very much.  As you can see by this photo there is a very important omission....poor Kerry hurt her back in a bad crash on the Tuesday of the second week and it didn't recover in time for her to get back on the slopes.  I really hope it won't put her off as everybody falls over skiing (Jamie more than most!) but it's very unlucky to suffer an injury like that.  We hope you had a safe journey home and in only 6 weeks we will be back there too.
Just to add...Charlie has gone up a skiing group...he is now a High Flier and in the same group as Ned although Ned has only one more thing to complete before he goes up too.  Lucy has made it all the way to the top and is a Junior Hotshot, the highest group in the 4-6 age group, so is very young to have made it this far...congratulations Lucy!

Banff hot Springs and Lake Louise

We woke last Saturday morning to temperatures of -35 and a very frozen Dodge Caravan.  Our poor car had never been exposed to such low temperatures and clearly didn't like it much. After adding gas line anti-freeze to the petrol tank, waiting, adding a bit more, waiting again and then just hoping for the best it finally started.  We decided we really needed to secure underground parking for the following night!  Our activity for the morning was to be Banff Hot Springs.  The mineral springs discovery dates back to 1884 by men working on the railway and then after the famous Banff Springs Hotel was built, a bath house was put up to attract visitors and tourists to the newly created National Park.  The temperature of the water at the source of the spring is 47.3 degrees C in the winter and is cooled to between 37 and 40 to make it comfortable for bathers.  It was certainly a gorgeous temperature when we went in it, just the walk out of the building that was a bit on the chilly side!  We stayed in for about half an hour or until we all started to feel a bit faint, also I was beginning to feel a bit sorry for the other bathers who had come to take the waters and admire the view in peace and quiet and there were our 6 children thinking they were in the local swimming pool!

In the afternoon we went to Lake Louise, about an hour from Banff.  It was absolutely stunning, a lake surrounded by the highest mountains, with the sun just appearing over the top.  So we walked down the lake for some photo opportunities until we all got spooked when our feet started to get wet! We walked back a lot faster than we had walked out!  We bribed the children to get a move on by taking them to see the ice rink and the beautiful ice castle built on the ice by the huge hotel that has been built on the side of the lake, Lucy was in her element!
Back to Big White the next day in not quite the same conditions that we had arrived in, a journey that lasted about 8 hours in treacherous conditions, sub zero temperatures, ice, fog and snow.  Hats off to our children though who all behaved amazingly, so why can't I even get them to Exeter without an argument!