winterlude!

The weather this past weekend couldn't have been any more perfect for the first two days of Winterlude, and we took full advantage of the balmy conditions to head into town and check things out. We made our way into Ottawa to Confederation Park where there were ice sculptures galore - some big, some small, and some already sculpted. Man, the people that do this are talented! I'll have to google who won the big block competition - here are a few pics of the contest that had artists working from a single block of ice.




Hendrik was happy (sleeping!) in his seat in the stroller, and we were happy when we discovered that across the street there was a pancake breakfast - hot chocolate and panners for free! Yum. So we picked up our goods and made our way into city hall to eat, warm up a bit and find a place to feed the little guy. The amoeba of dudes behind the information desk told us that we'd find a secluded bench on the second floor, and so we made for the elevators - this was to be my first time nursing in public - eee. Well, long-ish story short, we ran into a City of Ottawa employee who kindly took us up to the second floor in the freight elevator, found us an office (and not just any office but a councillor's office - front and centre city hall) with a full view of the Parliament buildings and Confederation park, and then left us to our own devices. "There's a bottle of wine there help yourself" he said, with a smile. "And just close the door behind you when you leave." So much for nursing in public - !!!
100 years of Parks Canada!

Super impressive snow carvings... love!

Across the river at Jacques-Cartier Park there was much more going on - no free food, but snow and ice slides galore, and a ton of activities for kiddies. It was fun to see so many families and little tykes and tykettes running around with rosy cheeks, all bundled up in snowsuits... another year or two and Hendrik will get to experience Winterlude on a whole new level. Will we be here in two years? Eeeeagh, who knows. Anyways, we had a solid morning of winter fun.

Neal and Janna stopped by for a quick visit :)

Late last week we had a few Brinkman visitors stop by, and a few more are coming this weekend - yay. Yay for visitors! I wish that we too could do the visiting, that we could travel somewhere in the blink of an eye - maybe sort of like Dorothy and her red shoes? That might be easier than blink-travel (heel tap travel), because what if you blinked and found yourself somewhere that you didn't really want to be quite yet... that might be troublesome. Or at the wrong time (a big blink in the shower? Or mid-exercise?) - also a bother. If I could travel instantly, I'd go to Tokyo, to visit, to eat... and I'd go to Vancouver. And South Africa, and hmmm where else would I go... Denver probably, and maybe somewhere warm too - somewhere warm and beachy. The original heel tap traveler said it best though; there's no place like home, and I'm pretty happy to be here - home with my two boys.