Look whose Nine!!

That's right... my baby Cara-Li is now 9 years old!  No longer a baby I would say :(

We had some friends over at the cottage for the weekend to help us celebrate this special day.  Her actual birthday party has been postponed due to the broken arm situation.  We had 'make your own pizza' night as well as a chocolate fountain.  What a hit it was with the kids!

Happy Birthday my sweet Cara-Li!  Love ya!

End of the Season

Another ski season is done and we are so, so sad!  It was a fabulous season for all of us even if Cara-Li did break her arm snowboarding  :(

Alexia greatly improved this year and is now capable of skiing completely on her own and for long periods of time.  She will be able to join the ski bunnies next year which would give us parents the freedom to ski more leisurely.  Cara-Li had a great ski season as well, skiing on Saturdays and snowboarding on Sundays.  Next year, since Alexia will no longer need her naps, we will be doing complete ski days on Saturdays which will leave us the Sunday to relax!  Something we really missed this year.  It was always run, run, run!  And because we were so busy, the camera was most often forgotten and therefore very few pictures :(  Here are just a few.

On the road

We were on the road this weekend.  It had been planned for a while that we would go visit our friends V and J for a ski weekend along with our other friends N and S plus all our kids.  And it ended up being a good weekend to do so as this was the weekend that we would put our house up for sale officially.  We spent every night during the week preparing, cleaning, decluttering and staging.  This included buying some furniture and curtains for our front living room.  For the last 8 years, this room has been one giant playroom for the kids.  But prospective buyers may prefer to see it as a formal living room. 

Here is a before:

And here an after:

We left the house at 1:30PM on Saturday to make our way up North.  A little more than an hour into the journey, we get a call from our realtor announcing that he has taken photographs of our house, planted the FOR SALE sign outside and has already shown it to a couple.  Geez!  This guy is quick!  And, he proposed that we have an open house the following day since 2 other homes were having open houses.  We carried on merrily with our weekend, drinking, eating and having lots of fun with our friends.  What we did not notice was that an email had come in from our realtor.  We only noticed the next day that we already had an offer on our house!  We carried on with the open house with lots of interest but by the time we came back from our weekend, we accepted their offer!  Can you actually sell your house so quickly?  We'll see as a few things need to happen before it is completely official.


Here is a picture of 4 of the 6 kids present during our weekend away.  Check out the 2 older goof balls.  They are too cute!  They both come from the same orphanage in China.  Isn't it great that they can be friends here in Canada?

What was to be a quiet weekend...

All was going well.  We, the girls, were having a quiet weekend at the cottage.  On Sunday, we headed out to the ski hill as usual.  Cara-Li takes snowboarding lessons on Sundays.

Here's a clip:

As you noticed, I turned off the video as I didn't want to crash and kill myself.

But here is the aftermath...

Seconds after I turned off the video, Cara-Li crashed and well, broke her arm!  Yup.  I thought it was your usual minor fall but no.  After I realized that she was not moving and holding her elbow, I knew something was wrong.  The ski patrol was called and she was taken down in a toboggan.  Now remember.  I am alone.  Alexia is in the daycare and Gord is in Toronto.  Cara-Li's arm was put in a sling with ice and I rushed off with the two girls in tow to make our way back to town.  A quick stop at the cottage to shut her down, a couple of phone calls to find a place to drop off Alexia once in town and then we were on our way to the ER at the Montreal Children's.  Four hours after the accident, we arrived.  Poor little thing was in pain.  Once they realized it was broken, they gave her morphine for the pain and put a cast on.  She was so brave!  Yah, so a quiet weekend it was not!  Oh, and did I mention that Gord was not impressed?

Spring Break

We don't usually do much during Spring Break since we usually travel on the kids' other week long holiday at Easter.  But this year, we decided to book a few days at Mont Tremblant just to change things up a little.  We made our way there late Sunday afternoon after having spent the weekend at our cottage.  Upon our arrival, we realized that there wasn't all that mush snow unfortunately.  Mont Tremblant is vert pretty resort most especially when it is snow covered, most especially because we were there to ski!  No need to worry.  By the time we woke up on Monday morning, it was a winter wonderland!  It snowed the entire day, never mind.  It was a blizzard!  Nonetheless, we skied and so did Alexia! she did one extra long run of 6.5km and then went to hang out at the daycare while the rest of us skied to our hearts' content.  What fun it was to ski and such a beautiful mountain!  We enjoyed a couple days of dining, skiing and relaxing before we headed back to Morin Heights, our little hill, and skied there for another day.

Unfortunately, we had to head back to town as we were having our new house inspected.  Thankfully, that went well and the deal was sealed.  On Thursday, the girls went to see the new exhibit in town at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Terracotta Warriors from China.  They visited the exhibit as well as go to calligraphy demonstrations and arts and crafts sessions.

And finally, the went to see Gnomeo and Juliet.  It was a fun filled week but now it is time to wind down and head into a quiet weekend at the cottage.  Gord is making his way to Toronto so it will just be the girls.  Fun!