Christmas 2022 and winter 2023

The Christmas excitement was strong in our house this year. The kids enjoyed decorating and Christmas activities. We had to convince them that the tree couldn’t go up before December 1st as a general rule. While the holiday season was an emotional one this year, the kids helped keep our moods up. It was looking bleary for a short while when Cadence came down with a week long fever the week before Christmas, threatening to cancel our holiday party plans. Luckily she came around in time for our Christmas Eve neighbourhood party. Lindy had taken the week off before Christmas and left all the prep to do that week which was difficult with a sick kid sleeping on the couch…somehow it all worked out. We enjoyed our first Clark family Christmas dinner in a few years, and hosted our neighbours for New Year’s Eve.

We kicked off winter with ski lessons for the kids at Mount Cascades. Isaac took off without hesitation and was skiing every hill on the mountain in no time. He loved seeing the racers on the hill and his instructor was suggesting he join the race team next year, however it is a major time commitment. Cadence needed a hug at the bottom of the hill at the end of every run, but by her last lesson she was riding the chair lift and skiing unassisted!

Unfortunately Asher was too shy to go with an instructor and decided to play in the snow at the bottom instead. He still had fun, and managed to go down half the bunny hill with Jon on his last day. His reluctance for coaches continued with swimming lessons, but he seemed to overcome it in time for the last two weeks of swimming lessons. We are wondering how it will go, trying to get him to get on a bus for school in the fall 🙂

This winter was a beautiful warm snowy winter. The kids loved shovelling snow, and Isaac decided to turn his passion into a job – shovelling our driveway for money to buy Pokemon cards! They also built a great luge track in the backyard, adding jumps and carefully maintaining it after every snowfall.

We picked a beautiful day to go to Jacques Cartier Park for winterlude activities. We got there in time to beat the line ups for tubing, however had to kill some time before the other activities opened up. Isaac and Jon did the zip line while the rest of us explored the mazes.

We had a fantastic Family Day adventure, riding the train, and walking down Sparks St to see the ice sculptures. We had lunch in the Rideau Centre food court after visiting the Lego store. We finished off the day at the 67s game before the kids fell asleep in the van on the way home.

Our lives have become much busier now as all three kids are getting invited to birthday parties and playdates. Cadence and Asher had their daycare friends over for their birthday party – which went surprisingly smoothly for 10 4yrs olds running around the house. They each wanted different decorations and different friends, but all had fun together in their glow in the dark party.

We also celebrated their birthday at Oma’s house, who had made a wonderful castle cake and surprised them with the doll house that Opa had built for Lindy when she was a kid. The kids loved it, and it will be a nice way to keep Opa in their minds. The kids expressed concern for Oma living on her own, and asked if she could come live with us…Isaac remembers that Oma and Opa came to sleep in our basement when Cadence and Asher were born.

As usual in our house, the celebrations kept going with a dinner with Grandma and Papa. The kids received walky talkies that send messages and can play memory games together – big hit. Next up was Isaac’s birthday party, and this year we invited several of his friends to a laser tag party which was super fun! (Lindy and Jon played too.) Perhaps the greatest excitement came from the gold Pokemon cards they found in their loot bags.

Isaac has enjoyed his afterschool martial arts, and joined a couple of Jiu jitsu competitions, winning a bronze medal that he is very proud of (he came third out of three – but losing is a good lesson too).

Asher and Cadence are slowly starting to let us finish what we are doing before we can play with them, now phrasing the question as “when you are done eating, can you play with me?” It’s a start, but it is followed soon after with Asher complaining that whatever it is we are doing “Takes a long time”. Cadence’s sense of time is cute too, as her stories that refer to something that happened last year/week/month often start with “a long day ago…”

The kids are very excited for spring to arrive, and we’ve started getting out on our bikes when we can. They look forward to going to the cottage and have all kinds of plans.