Before Spring Comes.....

.....I better post these pictures! It just would not be a Canadian blog without at least one post about Winter and Pond Hockey. And seeing as I read somewhere that Spring is (only) 39 days away or so, we better make sure we use that pond of ours.

3 days after we came home from Mexico, we noticed our pond was frozen over and had been for awhile. Yahoo!!! The best part though was that thanks to the wind, we didn't have to shovel a single snowflake off! And when you've got a pond this size, that is *such* a relief:

Last year we couldn't practice our skating skills, as Keziah had bubbles in her head (expanders for her birthmark). So we had some catching up to do! Keziah did very well and was quite thrilled with herself:

We learned quickly that if we wanted Lincoln to try to skate, we had to leave him alone. Every time we tried to help him, he would give up. Every time we left him alone, he would get himself off the chair and give it a try - all on his terms.

It wasn't long before Keziah ditched the chair for a hockey stick!

Lincoln thought it'd be fun to play as well:

It was a fun 10 minutes out on the pond! Actually, that's how long I thought we might be out there, but we actually were out there for over an hour. We ended looking through the ice for the fish :o)

It's a good thing too that we enjoyed the pond that day. A couple days later it was covered in snow. I was then feeling ambitious and shovelled off almost half of it - well, once the kids gave up:

I was so proud of myself, I showed Nathan at night the above picture. He looked at me with pity and asked: did you not see the weather forecast for tomorrow?

Sigh. We were hit with another snowstorm the next day.....and a few days later......and well, again some more snow this past weekend. So no more skating on the pond. The ice is ruined because I shovelled it, which allowed the sun to melt the top layer, and then with the next day's snow, it just is now a big huge rough mess of ice.

Well, there's always painting in the snow!