Christmas Eve this year was celebrated in Sherbrooke, about an hour and a half east of Montreal near Magog. We recently met a Polish family, Artur, Beata and little Karolina, which moved there just a few months ago. Artur has a post-doctoral position at the University of Sherbrooke working on top secret nanotechnology to efficiently harvest solar energy for use in satellites (really!).

We arrived about noon on December 23rd with the whole family including dogs. First thing was to have a cup of tea and then head out for a dog walk before daylight ran out. Parc du Mont-Bellevue is a large natural area bordering the University. A loop about 5km long provided us a couple of hours worth of dog sledding, luge practice, canon balls into the snow and plenty of go-fetch.

Upon returning it was time to get to work with preparing the next day's feast. The responsibilities were divided as follows:

• Beata: Dough for perogies, soups, cakes
• Artur: Cooked fish, helped with home-made noodles.
• Bogusia: Perogy stuffing and herring.
• Alex: Stuffed buns

This year I figured out that making the bun-stuffing a day early was what I was missing from my dad's recipe. Beata made perfect borsch and the best home-made noodles, but unluckily her cakes fell down every time.

Jakub and Robert loved to play with their new two year old friend Karolina. Karolina's mother talked to her all the time and she picked up cute comments that didn't sound like they should come from a toddler: "Oh how wet the dogs are." "Oh what a huge meal". "Oh what a big racket." She's a delightful and intelligent little girl.

Robert loved all the musical toys in the house, especially the dancing santa. He danced with Mr Clause for hours. During the rare times that santa got boring there was always the house with all the real-life sound effects.

Dec 24 was all about finishing the food and then eating it. Everyone was pretty tired for some reason and we were moving a little slower than the day before. When the kids had their nap we also wrapped all the presents to put under the tree,

Another Polish couple and their boy came over for dinner. They brought desert including a delicious "Poppies and Macaroni", which was some kind of a sweet layered construction topped with whipped cream. I think I'll try to recreate it in the future. My aunts deserts from the Calgary Christmases were still king in my opinion, but these were pretty yummy.

We quickly gave up trying to make a dent in the food. I am not exagerating when I say that after everyone had gorged the serving plates looked practically as full as when they started. They must have had leftovers for weeks.

Then came presents, which just turned into a crazy free-for-all. There were two remote controlled cars. The fathers tried to handle the remotes, but the kids handled the cars directly.

All in all a great Christmas for two families alone in Quebec. I would go for it again next year!

Christmas is coming, and we are having fun preparing. A few weeks ago, my Mom came from Calgary to visit, and we had an early Christmas feast with her (as she's going to Australia for two months, and we won't see her over the holidays). With her, we went to the Santa Clause parade here in Montreal, to start of the holiday season.

Last week we got our Christmas tree (from IKEA - $20 and then we got a $20 gift certificate, so it's like getting the tree fro free). Also we took out our outside Christmas lights and Kubus helped me with their arrangement. Last year we had blue lights hanging in a tree outside, but in the spring, squirrels thought the lights were nuts, and bit through the cord, taking them away. We still have them up there, but the cord cannot be connected to an electrical switch anymore. I still can't believe the amount of wildlife around in our neighbourhood...

Later that week, I wanted to make a gingerbread house with the kids, but I was too cheap to buy a kit. So instead we made it out of materials we had at home. That was fun, but the house is not as nice as I thought it would be. So I bought a kit anyway and today we put it together. I think I like my house better... what do you think?

Also, Kubus wrote his first letter to Santa Clause. He told me what to write, and I wrote it down. He wrote a wish list for all of us (even Joxer and Guapa). Then he signed it and drew a picture of the dollhouse he wants.

Yesterday, however, was the best part of all of the Christmas preparations. Every Friday evening, Kubus goes to Polish school, and yesterday night was his Christmas concert. He had to sing and say a few lines of a poem and dance. It braught tears to my eyes, to see Kubus singing so loud, saying his poem infront of all of the other parents and Santa Clause. He was so not-shy, so loud, so happy, so good - I was so proud! Then at the end, Santa gave each kid (even Robert) a package full of candy, cookies, oranges, and toys. After the concert, there was a party, and the kids from the polish school (along with Robert) were running around like mad, and having the best time of all.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Found this old video of when Jakub was learning to crawl.

Found this video of my waking up Jakub when he was a baby.

Video of a very scenic drive through Newfoundland's Gross Morne National Park. We were going to a restaurant in Trout River.

I liked this conversation I had with Jakub while he was taking a bath yesterday.

Not too long ago we all decided to take a trip to the end of the island. It was one of our first family bike trips since we bought baby seats. We've found that biking in the summer is a very excellent way to see a lot of things in our area of the island.

We saw the St Anne boat locks in action, Jakub watched a man fishing and we looked at the colorful plants near the water.

The restaurants in St Anne are great and we hit one of the Fish 'n Chips places for lunch. Iced cream on the boardwalk was for desert.

On the way home we stopped at Centennial Park, when Jakub has his art class, and played at the playground for awhile.

On the long weekend in September, Jenny and John invited us to go canoe camping in La Vérendrye (the Northern Quebec super-park for canoeing / kayaking). We found out that dogs are allowed, so we were happy to go.

To make it a bit more exciting, instead of getting two canoes (one per family) we decided to rent a canoe for ten people, and pack the four adults (Bogusia, Alex, Jenny, and John), two kids (Jakub and Robert) and three dogs (Joxer, Guapa, and Whiskey) plus all our camping gear into this awesomely-huge canoe.

The weekend was awesome. We stayed two nights, and three wonderful days. Our campgrounds were on little islands (only big enough for us), so the dogs ran free, protecting us from the squirrels and mice. The weather was fantastic, the canoeing was great, and we even got to do some fishing. As usual, there was some competition among the two families: Who can cook the better meal, who can catch the bigger fish, who can swim the straightest in open water, who can lose a paddle fastest, who can make the biggest fire... This trip brought us back to our good old days of camping. Definitely the best fun in years!

This is a set of pictures I found kept from reviewing my home-made security system. Sometimes the system caught pictures of birds coming in for landings right in front of the camera. These images were taken a couple of summers ago, but I found them when cleaning up my computer.