teamluguy

The town of St-Sauveur has set up 2km of skating paths in the forest. It's well groomed and wide enough for all kinds of flailing around. Alice is getting more and more confident with or without her skating support. Our normally hesitant sweetheart asked if we could skate again tomorrow as we were stepping off the ice. You would love skating also if you had pink princess skates.

How lucky are that we can zip up to the ski hills for the day whenever we choose, and stop in for après -ski with Gran and Grandad afterwards. Here is Alice on her first time skiing at Mont Avila (same place Katherine, Lucy and Gareth got pulled up the baby slope by Grandad many years ago) It was a big production renting gear and getting started, but well worth it for the two runs of fun!

Daddy has just returned from two property audits in Morocco. This was a wonderful trip, with wonderful people, great food and amazing landscapes. Snow capped "Moyen Atlas" in the background. A typical hotel in the desert. I tried to get the maximum number of shadowy layers and this took cake. This is the typical track to get around. The Dakar Rally is held near here. An old palace in an oasis. An "acacien" tree in the desert with a town in background. The "auberge" where I stayed. Fences constructed from palm fronds to help stop the sand dunes from invading town. The old ambulance at one of the mines (There is a brand new one next to it but not nearly as interesting). Sandstorms are strangely reminiscent of snow storms on the prairies. The head dress was somewhat of a necessity on this day. Very comfortable. Le "Haut Atlas". The gigantic mosque in Casablanca. I couldn't gain access because it was friday. Next time. Typical meal (tajine) with ...

There are so many things to do during the holidays, it's difficult to choose! In the end, we flipped a coin between the Biodome and Science Center, and science trumped... well... biology?!? There is a fantastic dinosaur exhibit on in Montreal, complete with animatronic dinos - which are, I can only imagine, very lifelike. The girls seemed to think so anyhow, since Estelle was gripped tightly to my shirt collar, and Alice wouldn't step forward towards them to let other people walk by. Much fun and luckily no velociraptors followed us home. A baby T- Rex !

Since we were in bed by 9:30 on New Year's eve (the parents, that is - the girls were down at 8pm), we were among the very few up bright and early on January 1st. Luckily we still had a little snow, so we headed to Centre de la Nature for slippin' and slidin'. Everyone was very brave going down the big hill.