Happy Spring!

Happy Spring?  Today is the first day of Spring, but it doesn't quite feel like it yet - the wind chill never got out of the 20's here today and we're expecting a dusting of snow overnight. I guess this weather would have felt positively tropical to us when we were in Quebec City. Speaking of Quebec, here are a few photos of our last days on our trip!

The day before we left, it snowed throughout the day, probably about 6 to 8 inches total. It was pretty, but it was difficult to push the stroller around!  We paid a visit to the visitor center at the Plains of Abraham for a really neat history lesson on the struggles and battles between the French and the British to gain control of Quebec City and the Province.

After our history lesson, we rented a couple of bucket sleds so we could pull the kids around Battlefields Park. In the summer the park has plenty of places for activities such as jogging, biking, and picnic-ing. In the winter there are several trails dedicated to cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, and sledding!

We pulled the kids around for a little bit, but then Clare decided she didn't want to wear her gloves anymore and that she wanted to be picked up. So we took a little rest on a bench and soon had an explanation for her sudden fit of crankiness - naptime!

While Clare snoozed, Sean got busy clearing off some park benches while Thom John explored the area a little more.

Snowbeard!

After lunch, we took a tour of the Parliament Building:

I didn't get any good photos inside the building since we had a wardrobe change and a snack emergency, but it was a nice tour - short and sweet.  After that we passed an outdoor skating rink and decided to try out some ice skating. The boys rented skates and a helmet for Sean and hit the ice:

Sean's Number One Fan cheered him on with pride:

The City Ramparts - the only remaining city walls in North America left North of Mexico:

After all that fun in the snow, we went back to our hotel and packed up to head back home the next day. Before hitting I-87 South towards home, we thought we would check out the Hotel de Glace - the Ice Hotel. And lucky us, it was opening day!

It was really cold!

Neat ice sculptures in the Hotel's lobby:

Checking out one of the bedrooms - the bedframes are made of ice and there's a little mattress on top with fur blankets. Guests at the hotel are also given a space-age sleeping bag for extra warmth :-)

 

When we were done looking around the Ice Hotel, we sampled a Quebecoise treat - tire d'érable, or maple taffy.  A man poured out a nice long line of pure maple syrup on a clean block of snow and we rolled it up on a popsicle stick.

The kids thought it was pretty darn good!

After we'd had our fill of maple taffy, we got in the car for the long drive back home. We had a really nice trip to La Belle Province, but we were happy to be home again.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

The kids had their St. Patrick's Day parties on Friday - they both wore their finest green clothes:

This is what happens when I ask the kids to sit closer together:

Clare showing off the leprechaun hat she made at school:

We did a bunch of crafts for St. Patrick's Day - we painted pictures with Irish colors:

 

We made a rainbow garland for decoration:

And Clare made us this cute little craft at school:

Beach in March

We took a trip to the beach earlier this month to spend time with the Sooy Babies' grandparents and great-grandparents. We smushed the kids into the beach buggy - I'm not sure they'll fit this summer...

When we hit the beach, the kids got busy digging in the sand. Then Clare put us notice that we'll be busy this summer -

Run run run!

Sean started digging a big hole and then set out along the water in search of treasure.

Sean's creature collection:

Despite the chilly temperatures and the cold, whipping winds, the kids didn't want to leave! Seems they're ready for summer. :-)

Log cabin

Sean brought home some of his artwork from school and this little collage was in the bunch:

 

I asked him to tell me about this picture and I tried my best to get down his response: "That man lives there. Abraham Linkin. He died a long long time ago, Miss Nancy said. He could be another president. He was a tall man. There's a penny on the house so he can look out the window. His face is on the penny, you know. I flipped it over backwards so he could see his house. He wore a tall hat. It's a silly hat. His house is a log cabin hosue for him to live in.  It has a triangle roof that ripped when the glue dried - oh well. He lived in Indanoy. Brock Obama is the new president and George Washington is the first president. Now, can I please have my vitamins?"

Science!

Last week, we did a couple of experiments - first up we "studied" a physical change by having fun with Ivory soap. Clare decided we needed to clean up with the soap, first:

After we were able to wrestle the bar away from Clare, I cut off about 1/4 of the bar and put it on a plate.  We put it in the microwave for about 10-12 seconds and look what happened:

FOAM!

Ivory soap has a lot of air trapped inside of it - more than other brands of soap - which is why a bar of Ivory soap floats in water.  When Ivory soap is heated up in the microwave, the air that is trapped inside the bar heats up, pushing on the heated, softened soap to create foam.

The foam is moldable, squishable, and feels kind of like shaving cream but not as wet. After a lot of smushing by the kids, the foam turned into soap powder. And our microwave smelled quite fragant for a couple of days :-)

Next up, we experimented with baking soda and vinegar. I poured a little vinegar into three cups, added different food coloring to each cup and then gave each Baby a pan of baking soda.  Sean used a dropper to drip the vinegar colors onto the baking soda and Clare used a little spoon.

It was fun watching the baking soda bubble up and hearing it sizzle. After awhile, Clare started scooping her baking soda into the vinegar cups.

Sean made "green mountains" with his baking soda and started to mold and shape it like clay. 

Sean and I chatted briefly about the fizzing - how it was the result of an acid meeting a base and forming carbon dioxide.  Sean thought that was so neat!

In Like a Lion

It was a rough first day of March for the Sooy Babies. Seanybear was playing on the playground this afternoon, fell, and smacked his mouth on the end of the slide. This incident left Sean nursing a fat lip while sitting with the Vice Principal (his favorite teacher) for a little while with a red popsicle. As for Clare, when I got to Clare's classroom to pick her up, I walked in just as she was about to give a warning BITE to her friend to get him away from the mat she was playing on!  Yikes!

 

Things were a little calmer at home - the kids decided to practice some yoga moves(?) before dinner:

And then things got silly - some mugging for the camera:

and pantry peek-a-boo: