What's up...

We’ve just been doing our usual winter things these past couple of weeks.

Kids are skiing every Saturday. This week, in addition to the morning lesson, they will be skiing in the afternoon with a friend who’s coming out with us. Extra practice and some “fun” skiing too! I just hope the weather’s okay – it’s going to be warm, which is fine, but there might be some freezing rain, too, which is not so great.

They also have skating lessons every Wednesday. This past week the instructor put Button into a higher group. He was the fastest kid on skates in his Kindergliders group, and easily able to do the turns and things they were supposed to be practicing. So he’s moved up a level to be with kids who are a bit older and a bit better skaters – so he’ll learn more. For her part, Mustang is making good progress too. They are doing little jumps while skating and this past Wednesday they started to work on cross-overs. She was finding that a bit difficult, but managed it half-decently a few times. (I’ve never been able to do it while skating, so she’s way ahead of me!) Maybe I’ll have her practice crossing over one foot in front of the other while walking; that will give her a chance to get the feel of it while on solid ground!

Mustang was home from school all week the week before last. Started out as just a bad cough, and I would have sent her to school on Tuesday except she had a bit of fever, which didn’t resolve itself completely, and by Thursday night the cough had deepened into a chest cough, so I took her to the doctor who diagnosed bronchitis and prescribed some antibiotics along with strong cough syrup at bedtime. The cough syrup helped her to sleep better and she rested well all weekend so was back on track this past week.

Last Saturday we went out for our movie night (or, in that case, afternoon). We saw Hotel for Dogs, which Mustang had heard about at school and really wanted to see. We all quite enjoyed it – a feel-good story with a happy, if somewhat wacky, ending. As a trans-racial adoptive mother, I found it interesting to see that (SPOILER COMING!) in the end, the two (white) kids are adopted by the (black) social worker and his wife.

As for me, well, I’m busy with Nanny-hunting, paying bills and financial record-keeping (finally got my desk cleared off after somewhat neglecting things since before Christmas) and hope to start work on some more sewing projects this coming week – I’ll start by finishing off the projects I started way back in October, then proceed to a couple of new things.

Laolao and Laoye will be arriving for another visit in just 18 sleeps (yay!). I held off telling the kids until we turned the calendar to February, and they’re eager for them to arrive.

And – double yay! – just six weeks (and 1 day) until the spring equinox!!!!! Of course, it’s likely to stay cold for those six weeks, and we could still have tons more snow, but the halfway mark between winter and spring (official) has now been passed. And, frankly, I do think it is actually somewhat more than the halfway mark, since winter started early here this year (by mid-November) whereas I don’t think we’ll snow and cold until mid-April. Late, yes, given the amount of snow we’ve had so far and the general below-average temps we’ve been having, but I don’t think it will last that long. Unless last year repeats itself and we get another metre of snow in the first week of March. Here’s hoping that doesn’t happen!!!