Skip to main content

Saying Goodbye to Winter


Wishing for warmer temperature (and more sunshine) is common this time of year. I really enjoy winter, but usually by March I have joined the 'complainers,' wishing away the cold dark days in favour of something else. I have only escaped winter three times in my life. When I was in elementary school my family drove south to Myrtle Beach for March Break. When I was a teenager my family spent a week in Disney World in November. Most recently, when our kids were younger (2012) we spent March Break at a house in the Bahamas with our good friends.

This year marks the fourth time I have abandoned winter, but this time we are leaving it for good, not just for a week. On Thursday we are going to Cuba with some very dear friends of ours. It will be our first trip to a resort ever (maybe our only one ever!) and it marks the beginning of our adventures away from home this year. When we return from Cuba we will only have one day to pack and get organized before we leave on the big road trip, so winter is essentially over for us already.

We did our best to make the most of this winter. We skied downhill and cross country about once each week, even when it was bitterly cold. This weekend we went up to our cottage so we could enjoy a few more peaceful days of winter weather, and were very lucky that we were able to skate on the lake in addition to snowshoeing and skiing. We love winter, and I have to say it is wonderful to be leaving it before we get too tired of wet boots, cold fingers, and icy driveways.


Downhill skiing at Mount St. Louis. Lots of great sunsets this year, even though they were at 5PM. :)


Cross country skiing in -20°C weather at Springwater Park. We were warm when we were moving.


A beautiful - warm! - day in Niagara Falls during our last visit with family. It was Monday and VERY strange not to be at work/school.


Skating at Nathan Phillips Square. We missed the Leafs outdoor practice by an hour or so.


Snowshoeing in the forest. Glorious sunshine and really cool ice formations on the rocks.


Skating on a frozen lake. For me, this remains one of the most magical winter experiences.


We estimate that we had about 5 rinks' worth of ice all to ourselves.


Skiing across the lake.




Comments

  1. Love the winter pics, Amy- especially the downhill skiing and lake skating! You do a great job of embracing winter and all the beauty and fun it affords. ❄️❤

    ReplyDelete
  2. Swapping snow for sandy beaches? Está volao!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ontario is Very Big

Today is the last day of the trip. We have been in Ontario for nearly a week, and driving across this huge province has been an education on its size. We knew it was big, but now we have an idea of how big ‘big’ is. As soon as we entered Ontario the landscape was becoming more familiar. We were back on Canadian Shield territory, with rock cuts along the highway and lovely lakes dotting the landscape. We stayed at Aaron Provincial Park the first night. It was a beautiful park. Our campsite was on a small peninsula which allowed us to enjoy the sunset and sunrise. It is definitely a place I would come back to if we make this trip again. The next night we passed through our last time zone change on our way to stay in Thunder Bay at the home of a friend. Deb, John, and Noah were great hosts. We enjoyed the opportunity to share a meal and conversation with other people! Their home is lovely and back onto some really gorgeous country. We loved hearing about life in Thunder Bay and...

Manitoba

Manitoba June 20, 2019 Yesterday was a day for everyone to just relax and recharge one’s batteries. The kids played at the playground and beach at Echo Lake. I went for a 10km run, a first in a while and therefore tough. Today we headed out on the 3.5 hr drive to Riding Mountain National Park in our penultimate province: Manitoba. We’re staying at Wasagaming Campground that has more than 700 sites.  The visitor centre had some really well done taxidermied animals: wild cats, black bears, owls, deer. We also walked to the beach of Clear Lake, which is lovely. Troop moral is a bit low these days. Lucy and Amy are quite home sick from what I can see. Miriam is quite happy to plan things like the pool game at Grollis’s house a week after we return. I’m sad that less than two weeks of our trip remains and then only 2 months before going back to work. June 21, 2019 Last night Lucy came back running from the washroom. She was freaking out because she had discovered...

Trip Blanket

Back in the fall I spent some time brainstorming ideas about how I could knit a blanket with yarn I picked up during our epic roadtrip. I wanted to include data (such as km driven, km hiked) in the blanket somehow. I knit a couple of prototypes and got some great ideas and advice from Lisa Noble ( @nobleknits2 ) It is thanks to her that I tracked homesickness and created our 'getting along index,' which I agree makes it much more personal. The photo here shows the orientation of data in each of the 19 squares that code for a state or province. The state/province abbreviation and number of days we slept there are noted at the bottom. One side of the mitred square gives the number of km driven and the other side has number of km hiked. Homesick index and getting along index are at the top of the square. I used morse code in another colour for the abbreviations and for the distances. The rest are just indicated by a number of stitches in a different colour. The square below...