For the end of P's spring break we decided to go visit Claude's aunt Lulu and uncle Roger. They live in the country near a very small town called St. Eusebe that is close to the New Brunswick and Maine borders. On the road from Riviere du Loup to Edmundston NB you head south at the town of Cabano. Anyways I had met them several times but had never been there and the boys were excited that they had horses and cats there. It is a really pretty area of gentle rolling fields and woods. As seems to be our luck there was rain on the drive there and Lulu had said that they had freezing rain earlier int he day so we weren't sure what the small country roads would be like. We also managed ... read more

Spring Break has gone so fast. Since we didn't get back from camping till Tuesday, it has been a short week. P had his second and third snowboarding lessons on Tuesday and Wednesday. Before going he had been complaining that in the first class he didn't get to slide on his own and he had to walk up the hill, and in true P fashion he would "never get to go faster or go down the bigger hill!". Well in these lessons they had him using the chair lift and coming all the way down the big hill. When he came back from the Tuesday lesson he had been freaked out by the chair lift (they had to stop it to get him off), and his instructor made him do "way too much sliding!" Just no ... read more

The second part of the trip seemed to fly by faster than the first part. Normal I guess. We revisited each of the parks except for Hollywood Studios. Epcot was our favorite so we went there for short days a few times. In the second week we also went out to Cape Canaveral to the Kennedy Space Center for a day. That was a great trip. We all enjoyed it even more than we expected and could have spent an extra day there to see everything. For this blog entry I was going to mostly do my writing right with each photo, but when I previewed the blog about half way through doing it this way I find that it doesn't easily show all that text with the photos so I am cutting it out and ... read more

Ice Fishing at Ste. Anne de la Perade We have just finished the most amazing day. It was our coldest day yet this winter (-22C) all day, but it was beautifully sunny and we headed off for a day of ice fishing at Ste-Anne-de-la-Perade (why do Quebec towns have such huge names??). We arrived at about 11 am. It is supposed to be one of the largest ice fishing areas in the world and I believe it. Claude said he even remembers hearing about it as a kid, but never got to come. The brochure said that there are over 600 rental cabins on the river accomodating up to 4000 people each day and each night! The fish that you fish for is called Poulamon or "petits poissons des chenaux" or Tommycod. We booked a little ... read more

I determined this weekend that Quebeckers (not sure how to spell that!) do winter better than anyone else I know. I think it is because they normally get so much snow but at the same time have relatively mild winter temperatures (as opposed to back home in Alberta). It has typically been about -5 to -10 degrees C this winter, so great weather for being outside. Unfortunately after a good start of snow in late November, we have had basically none since mid December. Ironic that the winter we are away and wishing for snow Edmonton has the most snow it has seen since 1985! Anyways, with no snow we went looking for other winter activities. In the local paper this week they showed two places nearby with networks of skating trails. We decided to check ... read more