Spring has sprung.... again!

After a week of snow & sub zero temperatures, which even by Canadian standards was quite unusual, we have had a lovely warm sunny weekend and it's set to continue. Thank goodness! Even poor Charlie opened the door one day last week and said "bloody snow"! Oops - not sure where he has heard that before! The main event here has been Charlie's 3rd birthday, which is actually today but we celebrated it on Saturday when we were all at home. He had a lovely day with lot's of presents to open and a
trip to Medicine Hat to spend some of his money, which he very much enjoyed. Other than that it's been pretty much all work and no play. Thing's are really 'ramping' up for Leigh with the onset of the Prairie season which starts on Thursday, and the recent snow dump has really hampered their progress (gosh, I sound like I know what I am talking about!). So we have a fairly quiet week ahead with not much planned - the children have a busier social life than we do this week, but with the Canadian winter well and truly behind us (we hope), we are looking forward to spending lot's of time in the garden... famous last words perhaps!

Alberta or Alaska?...We are snowed in!

So much for being decidedly chirpy about the warm sunny weather we have been enjoying recently - this weekend we have seen the biggest singular snow dump that we have had here all winter...and it's still snowing...and it's set to continue. We haven't made it out of the village all weekend - we can't even get the car out of the drive and even if we could, the snow plough which has cleared the main road next
to our house has dumped several feet of snow at the end of our road. Thanks for that! As our fridge is looking worryingly empty at the moment (apart from some beers!) I decided to brave the elements along with Ben & Olivia and walk to our local shop. As nice as it was to get out of the house, I think we looked like something out of a Ranulph Fiennes documentary with all our snow kit on, our heads tucked in as far as possible whilst walking in a single file! My biggest regret was
that we were not wearing our ski goggles, which would have been very useful given the blizzard we hit once we got out of the shelter of the houses! Our plan for this weekend was to head up to The Rockies again but after my last experiece of getting caught in a blizzard with Mum in January, we decided to stay here. Good decision! So Ben is upstairs now praying that School will be closed tomorrow, studious Olivia will be most upset if it is and Charles I don't think is fussed either way!

Med Hat or 'The Med'!

It's been another fairly quiet week here in Ralston apart from Marluz & I going to see Pavlo & his band in Medicine Hat. We had a really great night - they were briliant! The music was a mix of Latino, Spanish & Greek. It was really entertaining and it felt like we were briefly in a bar somewhere in the Mediterranean...it was a shame to leave the theatre and realise we were in down-town Medicine Hat! Even more of a shame to find ourselves in 'Ralph's Texas Bar & Steakhouse' a little later, which is a really typical Amercian bar full of Cowboys, 'Red Necks' and pool tables! Luckily the band we had just seen were in there aswell, so we had a drink with them! Otherwise,
Leigh is very busy at work preparing for the Prairie & the children are busy at school. As you may have gathered from the blog title, we are now fully experiencing the wierd Canadian weather - warm sunny days with overnight snow flurries! We had a lovely weekend in the sun and yesterday we went to Lake Newell which is about an hours drive from here. It's a huge reserviour - the biggest in Alberta - complete with its own beach! Everything is huge here - the water stretched as far as the eye could see giving the feeling we were at the sea-side! There were even a few token sea gulls so we all felt very much at home!

Spring has sprung (we hope!)

We are all decidedly chirpy in Ralston this week as with the exeption of one days snow, we have been enjoying warm sunny days with highs of +14. We managed another picnic at Echodale on Sunday, which was lovely and I hear there were a few more BBQ's dusted off around the village. Sadly all this means that the Prairie season is almost upon us again and Leigh is already getting busy at work preparing for it. We had Leigh's 'team' (or whatever you call them!) over for supper on Thursday which was a really good night. One of them has vowed never to come back to our house
again, though I seem to remember he was the one helping himself to (rather alot of) the red wine! We had a fairly quiet weekend - the first in a while and it was actually quite nice not having much to do. The kids are loving the warmer weather and are constantly out on bikes/rollerblades/skateboards/scooters - any mode of transport that doesn't involve walking normally! Its nice for all of us not to have to wear our entire wardrobe just to go outside for a bit! We had the Flavells
(Marluz & Paul) over on Saturday eve - they are our perfect guests as they cooked and brought a fully prepared supper for all of us with them! So that was a nice eve. Marluz & I are off into Medicine Hat tomorrow evening to see a performance by a Latino guitarist called Pavlo...not sure what else to say about that!