Where does the time go? We've had a quiet week here in Ralston with the exception of Dinner at the Commander's house, which was nice (!) and an evening over at our friends house, The Flavell's at the weekend. And yes, at -23, we drove the 200 metres over to their house!!! It's still very cold here, though the school hasn't closed so that must mean it hasn't dropped below -40! But we have had some beautiful sunny days which is almost blinding against the white snow. Speaking of which, there is another 5cm of snow forecast for tomorrow (yawn!). I am sure that when the snow thaws, we will find many things in the garden that we have lost over the winter months - we haven't seen any grass since it first snowed in November! So not much to blog about this week. Just the usual school runs, ice hockey & after school clubs. Leigh is busy at work and next week is half term. Our plan is to head up to Calgary for a few days & hopefully get some skiing in at the Olympic Park. It's also the International Snowboarding Championships there so we hope to catch some of that too. Hopefully you can see the footage below of a much improved Ben practicing his 'hockey stop'. If you saw the previous footage that I blogged about 3 months ago then you will be impressed! Leigh and I are studying it trying to pick up some tips!

Well Mum, myself and the kids did make it to The Rockies after our unplanned stop over in Calgary! We woke the next day to find the snow storm had passed and it was a beautiful, clear, sunny day. Still very cold though - minus 35 with a windchill of -47! A tad chilly to say the least! The weather warning regarding the frostbite limit of 5 mins outside was still in place but the roads were clear so we went for it! Such a perfect day to see The Rockies - the snow covered mountains and trees set against the clear blue sky - just gorgeous. Needless to say the ski slopes & cable car were closed but I drove Mum around Banff, part way up Sulphur Mountain & Canmore so she had a good tour of The Rockies. We stayed overnight in Canmore in the same hotel that we had over New Year, and of course the kids wanted to go back into the outdoor hot tub! Trust them - I think that would have been suicide! Needless to say I wasn't up for it and it didn't happen! So I dropped Mum off at Calgary airport on Tuesday and she is back safe and well in good old Blighty! I think she enjoyed herself here!! So things are back to normal again, though the school had been closed for a couple of days. In Canada if the temperature drops below -40, the schools close (thank goodness!), but it has warmed up a bit now. It's funny to think that all of us here in Ralston get excited when the weather forecast in only -25! Positively balmy. We might even hit a high of -2 over the weekend. What a treat! It will feel like summer! I took a photo of our thermometer which is fixed to the wall outside my kitchen window. The lowest it goes down to is -30 and as you can see the red line had almost dropped off the scale that day! Brrr!

From plus 40 to minus 40!

We had a fantastic last few days in Vegas... Mamma Mia was brilliant, the Grand Canyon Tour & Hoover Dam flight excursion was amazing and Tom Jones was the perfect way to end a such a great fun week. Back to reality now!... Mum has had a great time with the kids and has managed the daily routine with ease including being caught in a blizzard on the school run!... Mum, myself and the kids should be blogging tonight from The Rockies...however we haven't managed to make it that far and have had to stop off here in Calgary! When we left Ralston this morning it was a chilly but pleasantly sunny day... but 1 1/2 hours driving time from setting off, we found ourselves in what only can be described as the worst driving conditions I have experienced so far here in Canada! With zero visability (due to a snow storm), severe weather warnings on the radio, a temp of minus 27 with a windchill of minus 42, a 'NO-TOW' enforcement on the Highway (ie if you cream off the road no-one is going to come and get you!) and a frost bite limit of 5 minutes outside, it seemed the sensible thing to stop off here in Calgary! So here we are in the BATUS house ( luckily it was available) for the night and hopefully conditions will be better tomorrow so Mum can at least see The Rockies before she heads back on Tuesday. All a bit of a culture shock from the relaxing times in Vegas!
(I know that will make some of you smile!!! :)) All the while Leigh is busy working in Ralston as we didn't win any money in Vegas either! (More smiles?!?!) So hopefully my next blog will be from The Rockies with a picture of Mum coming down a black run or at least the cable car on Sulphur Mountain!

Viva Las Vegas!

Mum made it over without any hitches and we had a great few days together before we set off to where we are now - Las Vegas!! We are having so much fun here! We arrived on Sunday morning to a very pleasant +50 degrees which compared to -18 when we left Calgary - it really felt like we were in the Tropics! Great flights down here - we went via San Fransisco and saw the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz - albeit very briefly from the air. We've done so much already, including a helicopter flight over Vegas at night which was just awesome!
Las Vegas has to be one of the funniest places anyone can visit. It seems that after being here for just a couple of days, nothing can suprise us anymore! We are at the point of not batting an eyelid when walking past the Colosseum, King Tut's Tomb or the Eiffel Tower! The Casinos are bizarre. There are so many of them and they are so huge and dark you could lose track of whether it is night or day in there! We've yet to really gamble and have only done the $ slot machines so far! Tonight we are going to see Mamma Mia at The Mandalay Hotel. Tomorrow we are off on a aeroplane tour over the Grand Canyon & Hoover Dam which we are really looking forward to, and then perhaps a trip on a Gondola at The Venetian Hotel when we get back! And, as if this week could not get any better, we have tickets to see the one and only Tom Jones here at our hotel, The MGM Grand, on Thursday Eve.
I thought going to Glastonbury was cool, even seeing Chico at Butlins, but Tom Jones in Vegas! I can't wait! Knickers are at the ready - well not my best one's of course!

A much needed quiet week here in Ralston... Ben & Olivia back at school, Charlie back at nursery, Leigh back at 'work'. I say 'work' as he has been away on an advanced skiing course for the last 5 days doing very silly things like double black runs and off-piste stuff! Not at all envious! So it's been a pretty steady week. Ben is back playing ice hockey
twice a week and if the kids are not at the ice rink then they are sledging down Higgins Hill which is just next to the school. What's even better is that I can see it from the window here at home so I don't have to go! Leigh is back tomorrow and is picking up our very own Mary Poppins (AKA Granny Plymouth, (my Mum)!) en-route. Mum is flying out for two weeks to see us all, and give Leigh and I a bit of a break. So taking full advantage of this rare opportunity, Leigh and I are off to Las Vegas for 5 days on Sunday. Yipeeeee! Hopefully we will win some money whilst we are there to pay for our current lifestyle! Failing that, Leigh will be back out on the Prairie for 6 months during the summer! So by popular demand, (and the coincidence of a boring week!) I'm posting recent pictures of Olivia & Charlie... and won't mention myself playing ice hockey or skiing! Hee Hee! I'll blog from Vegas if not before...

We are back from The Rockies after another great week there. We saw the New Year in with Paul, Marluz & thier son Paddy Flavell - friends of ours who were staying in the same hotel. We had a really nice evening with a Spanish twist at Midnight. As you may have guessed Marluz is Spanish and it is their tradition to eat a grape with each midnight gong and make a wish - we had to do the gong's ourselves though as we didn't get them here! The sleigh ride on Lake Louise was really lovely, though it was so cold the children rapidly lost interest and were soon complaining! The plan was to actually skate on Lake Louise afterwards but we were so cold we headed
straight to the restaurant. Another time perhaps! There is even a really beautiful ice castle which has been sculptured and put on the frozen lake so people can skate around it. Very pretty - especially when admired from indoors! As I mentioned in my last blog, Leigh, Ben & I had a day's skiing whist Olivia & Charlie went into day care (which they loved!). A great day but I think it would be fair to say that I am not a natural skier...I seem to remember swearing alot at leigh coming down a hill, which in my opinion he should have recce'd first! But it was fun and I think I might
have just mastered the art of getting off the chair lift without falling over! I had a few 'rest's' during the day to let the boy's go off and catch their hair on fire - which they did. When Leigh checked the map of one of the hill's he and Ben came down, it showed that part of it was a black run! Ben loved it - that's my boy! You wouldn't catch me making that mistake!

Apologies for a long overdue Xmas blog from The Rockies... We all had a great Christmas. We stayed at home in the village as did a few other families, so we had some rather jolly festive get togethers! Which was nice! The children were more than pleased with what Father Christmas left for them - Bob the Builder sit and ride digger for Charlie, a princess castle for Olivia & Ski's, boots and poles for Ben amongst alot of other things. We couldn't have gone away for Christmas even if we wanted to without hiring a 10ft trailer! So here we are at last in The Rockies...again, staying in a great hotel called The Windtower in Canmore. We have a self contained condo which is just what we need and use of the outdoor hot tub which is great! Seems a very odd thing to do when it's at least -9 outside, but once you are in it you can see why they are so popular. It's kept at around 40 degrees and being the sensible one, I kept my hair dry, where as Leigh and the kids got theirs wet so it froze to thier heads! With all the steam it's not a problem - as Ben pointed out it's like were in are a giant saucepan of people soup! Leigh and Ben have been skiing together already and today we went in another outdoor spa in Banff which is a natural hot spring a fair way up Sulphur Mountain. Tomorrow Olivia & Charlie are going into day care and Leigh, Ben and I are skiing together for the day at Sunshine Valley. I shall make sure I dont make a wrong turn at the top and come down a double diamond black run! I'm sure the boys wouldn't mind that! I have a few reservations though! We have a sleigh ride booked around Lake Louise for New Years Eve which will be a real treat. Sorry you haven't been able to see the sledging videos from my last blog - I keep trying but there seems to be a problem with the web page. I'll blog again at New Year. Hope you all had a great Christmas & have a great New Year x

Another great week! Ben & I have had such great fun skiing...obviously we have been singled out for the next winter Olympics! Well perhaps not me...but Ben was brilliant and whizzed past me a few times on the ski hills! Whilst I was working on my technique (zig zagging slowly down the mountain) Ben just pointed his ski's down the hill and went for it! No fear..I'm so envious! I couldn't even get off the ski lift without falling on my arse! Anyway,enough of that! Olivia & Charlie are great. Olivia has had her school nativity...sadly I missed it as I was skiing but Daddy went and was ever the tearful father. Friday evening we had the Mess Christmas party which was great fun. Scottish dancing (bizzarly!) and lots of carol singing...and drinking.. So as not to let the English down, we were there until the very end! This weekend we went sledging at Kin Coulee park (near Medicine Hat - hopefully you will see the footage below) - it was a great family day and the kids had such fun hurtling down the big hill. And being the biff that I am, I managed to get taken out by a teenage snowboarder (ouch!) Hillarious!. So, a pretty chilled week ahead. Kids at school and Leigh on leave (though he he went to work today)..Ben's Xmas concert tomorrow though Leigh won't be there as he is playing Ice Hockey at the Med Hat Arena v the Ex-pat's. Not many beers after the game then!...

Back from another weekend in The Rockies... It looks even more beautiful there now with lots of snow everywhere. We went back up the Banff Gondola (cable car) to the top of Sulphur Mountain and looked down over a very white Banff with it's frozen river - so pretty and so very cold! We also went back to Lake Louise to see the now frozen lake. Absolutely stunning - there was even a game of ice hockey happening on part of the lake! At -20 (plus windchill) we didn't stay there long though - infact we had a real 'National Lampoons' family moment where we walked the short distance from the car to the lake, paused slightly to take in the scenery and then very quickly walked back to the car! It was sooo cold, it's hard to describe! I don't think the kids were particularly chuffed either! So after a spot of indoor ice skating we went back to the condo with it's lovely real fire to thaw out! Everyone is well apart from the usual seasonal colds. Ben and I are off on a 3 day skiing course starting on Weds so we have been busy kitting ourselves out for that. Sadly Olivia & charlie are too young to come with us on this course, though don't think they are bothered! So Leigh will temporarily become CIC Home Command! The good news is that the weather forecast predicts it should not drop below -10! Positively balmy! I shall let you know how we get on...

Back from a long weekend in Calgary which was great fun and very cold! It snowed alot and the temperature did not get above -16, but as that is the norm in Canada everything was business as usual. We went up the Calgary Tower which apparently is the highest tourist viewing tower above sea level in the world which has fantastic views across Calgary. Part of the floor at the top of the tower is glass which was very wierd to stand on! We also went to the Science Museum which was full of interactive things for the kids to do, they loved it - infact we got turfed out at 5pm when it closed! We had a good look around the city with all it's impressive sky scrapers, had a look around the shopping malls, and went to the cinema (where Leigh & tried not to stay awake!). Another impressive sight there is the Olympic Village (Winter Olympics '88) which is still open for skiing, tobogganning, and ski jumping - what a shame we didn't have enough time! When you get up close to one of those massive Ski Jumps it makes you reaslise just how crazy those guys are It's huge!....!
Other news, Olivia received a Recognition Award at school last Thurday which was presented to her during assembly for all her hard work and enthusiasm - just another day at school for studious Olivia.
Everyone else is good. Its still very white everywhere. The plan is to go back to The Rockies this weekend so my next blog may be from there...