We try to get outside every day for at least a little bit of play - I find that it makes the winter that much more bearable, and what a blessing that we live right across the street from Mud Lake. So most days, we either play in our large backyard, or head right across the street to feed the birds, skate on the frozen lake, ski on the cross-country trails or just go for a hike to see what new animal tracks we can spot. However, the other day Kea was very curious to see what Britannia Beach was like in the winter, a spot we often visited in the summer. So instead of turning left at the intersection, we turned right - and I'm so glad we did. What a drastically different, but equally as beautiful and fun landscape greeted us on the other side!!!! We watched kite-boarders skim across the ice on their snowboards, we made fresh tracks in the snow over our usual summer swimming spot, and created many snow angels in the pristine snow!!!!!! Gotta LOVE winter:-)

February 24th, 2010

I can't believe that it was three whole years ago that we welcomed our baby boy into this family....






Today, we celebrated Ryland's birthday with a quiet family brunch, new birthday decorations, a homemade marble bag, a couple of small gifts and millet cake with strawberries! Then we met up with cousin Cam at the 'train museum' (Science and Tech - with full-sized trains to explore, a big hit with this little boys!) and had all of Ryland's favourite foods for dinner. Happy happy third birthday, my sweet son! xo

Winterlude, part one

Last Thursday we went to the Jaques Cartier Park to check out the Quebec side of Winterlude, and had a blast racing each other down ice slides, checking out the various snow sculptures, spinning our way down on tube slides and checking out some urban knitting. Lots of fun, and such a great way to spend a winter day:-) Next week we're excited to explore the Ottawa side, with the ice sculptures and canal skating. Here's a few photos of our adventure.......

Happy Valentine's Day!

And today we celebrated Valentine's Day....the morning started with new fleece pants, and the day was full of card making, chocolate-covered strawberries and white-chocolate hearts, marble runs and olympic watching, with a skate on Mud Lake thrown in this afternoon! A perfect, slow Sunday spent with my loves!!! xo

Gung How Fat Choy

We celebrated Chinese New Year on Saturday - starting out with a trip into Chinatown in the snow, which I have to admit was rather disappointing for us Vancouverites. However, we did find a few lanterns, some favourite treats and some new foods to try out. Including a dragon fruit, which we have often admired but have never tasted before. It was really good! We had a bit of a dinner party with friends in the evening, making dragons out of our recycling and making fools of ourselves with chopsticks - lots of fun, and great food:-) May the year of the Tiger prove to be a good year!!!!!!

Rare family photo

Rare family photo
Originally uploaded by the five mckays

I came across this blog post and it caught my attention. I love the idea of trying to get a full family photo (ie *I* am in the photo too!!!!) each month, plus writing a bit about what we are up to each month as a way of remembering one full year. SOOOOOO I'm going to try and tackle that project, and here is the photo I'm using for January! As is usual for me, very good intentions, but already running late on the first month! Oh well, here we go -

- We're so excited to be living in a winter climate this year. We're told over and over again that we've lucked out with a very mild year, but we're still enjoying it!
- Cross-country skiing out our front door, feeding many different birds in Mud Lake and watching the lake freeze over
- Skating on Mud Lake for the first time, and playing our first game of family pick-up hockey!
- All three kids starting up downhill lessons this month, and all five of us being able to ski down the big hills together. Granted this only works when Jamie is with us as he's confident enough of a skier to help Ryland down, but we have arrived at a whole new stage now!
- Ryland weaning on Jan. 1st, also symbolizing a whole new stage for our family. For over ten years now, I have either been pregnant or breastfeeding, and now I'm not even sure what I'm going to do with my new-found freedom. I definitely sense a weekend away somewhere all on my own, just because I easily can!
- The yurt is set up on the property now, and it's so fun to go out there to play and relax and hang out. We know there will be lots of work come the warmer weather and house-building season, but for now we're enjoying the peace!
- Feeling a little anxious about the delays in the severence process - apparently Lanark Health needs to see the land without snow and we can't move forward until that happens, so in the meantime we hold our breaths and hope for the best. We can't see any reason why it WON'T go forward, we just can't wait to know for sure!
- This is the month where Jamie FINALLY figured out what has been knocking him out health-wise, and starting taking the medication that we hope will kick the nasty bugs out of his system. It sucks to feel sick so much of the time!
- Tiegan lost her second tooth. Kea's face is changing daily and her teeth seem to be getting too large for her mouth. Ryland grows by leaps and bounds each day, and has now surpassed Tiegan's height at 4. The kids continue to grow so quickly, it's hard to keep up!

LIfe is good, and this month feels like the beginning of a fabulous year for us.....here's to hoping 2010 continues along this path!

The poor Volkswagen Golf was in a car accident last Tuesday. Neither Jamie or I have ever had an accident before, so we knew that odds were we would be in one sooner or later, it just sucks that a) it was *me* who had to have the first accident and b) that it was sooner rather than later!!!!! Jamie was also out of town at the time, so that sucked to deal with it on my own. I was driving up to the ski hill in Quebec with all three children in the back seat. The truck in front of me was so dirty that I couldn't see his brake lights, and so when he suddenly stopped at a GREEN light, at first I didn't predict that that would happen, then I didn't see the brake lights due to the mud, and then once I DID realize that he was stopping, I pressed on the brakes but it wasn't enough and I slid underneath his bumper, crushing the hood and creating a surprising amount of damage actually, for the impact. I was in a bit of shock, obviously, at what had just happened - but otherwise none of us felt anything with the impact. It looked much worse than it was, and then of course the police were there, and the firefighters, and the ambulance. There was a lot of concern because kids were in the backseat, but really I think having all these emergency people making faces at them trying to get them to smile, and asking them questions was more traumatic than the impact! Ryland was crying because he really wanted to go skiing, Tiegan was staring straight ahead and refusing to talk to anyone and Kea was trying to make me feel better by saying things like, "don't worry, mom, I didn't really want to go skiing anyways!"
The whole experience was a bit surreal, especially since everyone around me was speaking french the whole time so I couldn't understand what they were talking about, the police officer never asked me for my side of the story or really talked to me about details at all, and I didn't really understand what was supposed to happen when. But thankfully Ian was at home so I was able to call him to come pick us all up, and everyone was really good about making sure we were okay. It just really sucked to have to call Jamie later that day to tell him I'd smashed up 'his' car, and now the hassle of dealing with insurance and such!

HOWEVER, I do completely appreciate how much worse this could have been, and of course the important thing is that everyone is okay. It took me a few days to get my confidence back, and even though everyone has told me their various tales of things like this that have happened to them, I inevitably had to beat myself up a bit. But now I'm back on the road and ultra-careful about any potential silly moves by other drivers around me! Tomorrow we head back out to the ski hill, so wish me luck!!!!!