I am behind in my entries. I am entering this one on June 19th and we have already started our trip into the Gaspe, so I need to get the past ones done. Most night have been too tired to do entries as we have been crazy busy packing to come back home. Sheila came to visit me for a week at the end of May. It was great to have company to show around our favorite places. She had never been to Quebec and really enjoyed it. As a special gift for my and her birthdays, Claude gave us a night in a small hotel in Old Quebec. He kept the kids. It was a great chance to visit and explore on our own. The hotel was the Auberge Place d'Armes and it faced onto ... read more

We have walked through our "back yard" down the path to the river a few times in the last week or so. The spring flowers are really starting to come out. We saw many red trillium type flowers. I have never seen red ones before. The creek is running high but receeding and the river is still too high to get down to our picnic spot. We took a spring picture of the little falling down shed at the back of the property before the river. We have it in all the seasons now. It was a lucky thing too, because when Paul took a ride with the neighbour 2 days later we found out they had knocked it down. Sad. Unfortunately they have also decided to widen our little path. Not sure the reason yet, ... read more

Well, I have finally finished our souvenir for our year in Quebec. Some of you already know that I have been taking carving lessons since the fall. I have always wanted to learn and with the rich history of wood carving in Quebec it seemed like a great place to learn. Luckily there is a wonderful instructor in the area, Monsier Laplante (who was in the military so he also speaks english), and I was able to take 3 sessions from him. First in Deschambault in the fall, then right here in Saint Raymond in winter and finally finishing up back in Deschambault this spring. The first project was a fish. It only took a couple of weeks to finishe and turned out really well. After that you get to pick your project. I said I ... read more

We had been excitedly awaiting the visit for Easter by Karen, Laurel and boys. They were to fly in Wednesday night and fly out Tuesday after Easter. Unfortunately we had a huge spring snow storm in the Quebec City area on Wednesday and they got stuck in Toronto overnight. Our boys were very disappointed but at least they were put up in an nice hotel by Westjet and brought in on a special flight Thursday morning. Poor Eric ended up sick that evening in Toronto so probably best he didn't have to fly again that evening. The storm dropped almost a foot and half of snow on us, so it certainly wasn't very spring like when they arrived. As the weekend progressed we got quite a bit of rain on Saturday and warm on the other ... read more

Spring is starting to emerge here. Two weeks ago it was warm and the maple sap started to flow. Last week it turned a bit cold again later in the week and they have stopped flowing briefly, but the Cabanes à sucre (Sugar Shacks) are now open and since we didn't have much on this weekend we decided we should check one out. We discovered that at the last minute it can be tough to find one that has space, but we did get a spot at the Érablière (maple farm) between here and Pont Rouge called La Bonne Fourchette (the Good Fork). They didn't have the kids activities and demos of the maple production that the busier ones have, but they did have pretty good food and lots of it, so it was a good ... read more