 |
We have had a pleasant, though pretty much non-stop, Easter weekend. It started on Thursday night with Ann, David and Katy going to a Seder Supper at the church with the Youth Group. After the supper David went to the birthday party of one of his classmates while Katy and a bunch of her friends went to the Battle of the Bands, a competition among local high-school age bands. Katy was happy that her preferred band won; it includes Neal, the son of our good friends the Reads. Emily, meanwhile, had gone for a sleepover with one of her friends.
On Good Friday it was beautiful: warm and sunny. With Emily still at her friend's house and Katy and David still comatose, Ann, James and I decided to go for a hike. We went to a trail just this side of Peggy's Cove with our friends Cathy and Roger, Cathy's sister Jan, and Valerie. Unfortunately, by the time we got there, it had clouded over. The grey sky in conjunction with the stark rocky landscape made the surroundings seem quite bleak, but beautiful in a raw natural way.
On Saturday Ann and I went to Neptune to see Over the River and Through the Woods, a very funny play about family and independence. Our original tickets were scheduled for last week while we were away skiing, so most of our usual gang had already been. However, Jocelyn and Puxley had also changed their tickets to this week, so we went to dinner beforehand with them and their friend Elaine. We tried a new restaurant called The Wooden Monkey which is just down the street from the theatre. We all enjoyed both the food and the atmosphere.
 |
On Easter Sunday we all went, as usual, to the 20 minute early morning service on the Dartmouth waterfront near the ferry terminal. The service is followed by breakfast of scrambled eggs, sausages, pancakes and muffins in the church basement. After breakfast David, Emily, James and I came home to prepare for lunch while Ann and Katy went to the 11 AM service: Ann to help with communion and Katy to supervise the nursery. For lunch we had invited the Hazens, Mark, Shirley and their daughters Kathleen and Margaret (Mark and Ann are the leaders of the Youth Group), but in the end Mark stayed home with a cold. We ended up with far too much food and will be eating lamb roast leftovers for most of the coming week (not a great hardship in my view).
In the evening David had a tryout for the Dartmouth United Under 16 Tier 1 soccer team. He'll find out sometime in the next week or two whether he made the team.
Every year our first indication that spring is on the way is the appearance of the yellow winter aconites in Ann's rock garden in the corner of the back yard. We returned from our ski vacation last week to find that they had just appeared. Over the weekend they have been looking particularly cheerful in the bright sunlight.
 |
We have been out of town for a week during the kids' school break. Like the past three years, we went to Stoneham, just north of Quebec City, for a ski holiday. For the whole week prior to our departure a big storm was forecast for Saturday with the promise of 25 centimetres of snow, so we packed up the van on Friday night and left at 6 AM Saturday morning. We were in Grand Falls, NB, at the Auberge Près du Lac by 2 PM having had clear roads the whole way. As our room was not yet ready, we spent a couple of hours in the indoor pool before having an early dinner in their dining room. Ann, Emily and James crashed soon after dinner but Katy, David and I stayed up to watch the movie Bullet to Beijing with Michael Caine as Harry Palmer.
On Sunday morning we were up at a more reasonable time to continue our way to Stoneham, stopping in Edmunston for breakfast, and arriving mid-afternoon. We got ourselves installed in our two-bedroom condominium (Ann and myself in one room with James in a sleeping bag on the floor of our closet, and David and Katy in the other room with Emily in their closet), did a bit of grocery shopping to prepare for the week, rented equipment for Emily, James and David (the rest of us are fully equipped), then hit the slopes for a little warm-up night skiing.
 |
This year Emily and James decided to follow Katy's example and try snowboarding. They had lessons for five hours (including lunch) on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday by which time they were both quite capable of handling all but the most difficult runs. They are very similar to David and Katy at the same age: Emily, though quite competent, is very cautious and doesn't like to go too fast; James, on the other hand, lives for speed.
On Monday, David and I spent most of the day skiing together on the black (hard) runs while Ann and Katy did the blue (medium) runs. Ingrid and Alex also arrived to stay in the hotel until Thursday. They came over for dinner after which several of us went out again for a bit of night skiing. For the rest of the week David and Alex spent most of the time off on their own on the hard runs, while Ann, Katy, Ingrid and I skied in various combinations until James and Emily's lesson was over. Then we would usually go for one more run so that they could show off a little, then return to the condominium for dinner. In the evening some of us would usually go out for a few more runs. On Friday it was just the six of us again so we spent the morning and early afternoon skiing as a family before packing up and heading out, stopping in Rivière du Loup at the Hotel Levesque that night and driving the rest of the way on Saturday. We hit some snow squalls once back in Nova Scotia, but otherwise the drive was uneventful and we arrived home safe and sound around 8 PM Saturday evening.
 |
The weather this year was not so sunny as last, but the temperature stayed close to zero (a little above during the day, a little below at night) so the snow was good. Most days included a flurry or two which added a little powder over the base. All in all it was a very enjoyable trip with lots of exercise and fresh air, if not a lot of sun.
 |
We are once again pet-sitting, this time for Joey, Alex's guinea pig, while Alex is away at a hockey tournament. Joey has taken up residence on the bench in the TV room where he passes judgement on nonsense we happen to be watching.
On Friday David went job shadowing, a requirement for his Career Life Management course, itself a required course. Each student must spend the day following an adult around while they work, then report on what they learned. David is interested in architecture and designing houses so he shadowed John Hattie of Atlantic Home Designs. They went to New Glasgow where John has a job designing a new house on a waterfront property. David seemed to find it very interesting and learned a lot about how one decides the layout of a house.
On Thursday, Friday and Saturday Katy performed in the pit band for the Dartmouth High musical Ducktails and Bobbysocks, a light comedy with a contrived plot based around 1950s culture (the title should have given that away). Ann, Emily, James and I went to the final performance on Saturday night. Ann and I were very impressed by the whole show and Emily and James seemed to enjoy it too, especially the slapstick scenes.
February 2005 Archive
April 2005 Archive
Archive Table of Contents