Ski Panda

This is Centennial Park ski hill, they have a magic carpet which is a conveyor belt for little skiers and to the left is the t-bar.
Kieran's class is at the top of the hill. They are the little dots on the left middle part of the hill right at the top.

I brought my ski and snowboard every week thinking that I would get to go on the hill too, but all I did was pull him for the first lesson. In the second lesson he was going up to the big hill. And figures the week I don't bring my stuff, Kieran wanted to stay longer.
Murphy's law sucks man.


It was 8 weeks of lessons or was it 10. I can't remember. But he really enjoyed the class and did really well. It helped him to get confidence in tackling a larger hill like Mt St Louis/Moonstone. The skating lessons and xc skiing helped him too. He was the only kid in his group that could propel himself by skating.

Surprisingly Centennial was a really great place to learn skiing. It's not big, so for little ones it's perfect. Even for big kids who are learning, this is a great hill.

I noticed a lot of snowboard learners on the hill during our lessons.

Here's a video of their 2nd last lesson. The little kid that escaped the train and rocketed off on his own is not Kieran. That kid was reprimanded because he wasn't listening and could have gotten hurt and would be kicked off the hill for not listening. Some of these little ones can really fly. He was on the edge of wiping out.

Moonstone

Moonstone. Or was it Mt. St. Louis?
We were at the northern most site, with Jinn, Xander and Rachel. This is a great hill for learning on and getting confidence.

It wasn't that busy, at first. But after lunch it got much busier. But still it was great. We didn't have to wait too long for a lift.

I was pretty impressed with the kids' skiing.
I remember when I first went skiing. I couldn't turn. And they let me on the slopes.
I wiped out a lot. That was a long time ago.

Kieran fell a lot on his first 2 runs on the "big" slopes. But afterwards he was doing great. He was turning and handling the intermediate runs like a pro. They were going in and out of the trees between the runs. He was also going faster than me down the runs which was a little frightening, I wasn't sure if he would wipe out into a mini garage sale, but he was in control. If he can handle it, who am I to question. He's way better than I was way back when in never never land. I was just making sure there wasn't another missile around on a collision course. Gotta protect my kid. Even though he's got a helmet. You never know.





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Breaking bread

Kieran made this bread today.
He brought it downstairs to me after school.

It's his first bread.
It was delicious.




He likes to bake.
Coustanca, one of the assistants helped the kids bake bread today.

Maybe he'll be a butcher or baker or candlestick maker.
Which nursery rhyme was that from?

Happy Valentine's

It was Valentine's weekend.
And it was about heart shape cards and more heart shaped anything.
It was about flowers and being someone's Valentine.
They don't encourage the Casa kids to do valentines like we remember when one kid gives another kid a Valentine's card asking them to be the Valentine for another kid hiding behind a tree. Mostly because if a little one doesn't get a card then they are not mature enough yet to handle the situation. They may look like they can, but they are still pretty fragile.
So the kids are encouraged to write cards for their parents.
This is our card. It's certainly getting much easier to read, from the Christmas ones. This reads:

Dear mom and dad
I wish you happy
valentines day

All those stories he's been writing has been making a difference.
In our house every body gets a card, nobody gets left out.
We got place mats made of paper towels and heart shaped cards with glitter glue. And a breakfast plate full of hearts.


Hey even Fishey gets a Valentine's card.
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We also had cupcakes from Swirl. But they went pretty fast.
Then Kieran labeled different areas of the main floor.
If you can decipher them, you could do Davinci's code.

Tito Roger

This is tito Roger.
We officially said good bye to him today.

Last Thursday he passed away.
He had a heart attack.
He was always, to me anyways, the strongest (physically) person around. His brother Joe would probably disagree, but he was strong as a bull. Probably bull headed too. But when ChrisR emailed me with the subject: Tito Roger "Did you hear that he died?"

I disregarded it and went to bed.
Sure enough, the next day the phone calls came in.
I called Jen. She told me what had happened.

It was hard to believe that someone as strong as tito Roger, was gone. My parents are both long gone. And for me, I go a little numb when someone close passes on, and I pretend that they are away somewhere in some other part of the world. I'll see them all again, just like before. I think about that with everyone and every pet, that's been a part of my life.

Tito Roger is probably off somewhere building a deck.

Freshly Squeezed

It was a snow day today. But it wasn't the newsworthy snowstorm that they made it out to be. It was like a regular snow fall. The overnight one was heavier than the snow that fell during the day. Because of the weather forecast they closed the school. But it was nothing. I've seen more snow fall than this and the school wasn't closed.
It was also down hill ski lesson day, and I was looking forward to it but Kieran didn't feel like going. He wanted to bake.

He wanted to make some bread, but I didn't have all the ingredients. Just flour.
So he went over next door to Ola's to bake. Here's his ingredients. Flour, cheese, salami, and water.
It's like a pizza, sort of. I ate 1/4 of it. It's good. It's been an hour or so and I'm not going to the toilet so I figure I'm okay. Tresa says it's kinda doughy. And that she may paying for it later.

Then after work he wanted to bake more bread. So we broke out the W-S Snickerdoodle mix and added the other ingredients like eggs and milk and got the hand blender out. I handled most of it because of the raw eggs. It's baking right now, in the bunt muffin pan.

They look okay, but Tresa says they were a little dry and chucked hers into the food recycle. Maybe we'll share these with the neighbours, but we don't want any of the seniors to get sick or lose a tooth. But there are a bunch of feral cats around the area that I'd like gone.

Not sure what got into him, but everything he saw on the boxes he wanted to make.

After the baking, he wanted to make a juice drink. It's just 2 clementine oranges that I think he squashed with a fork. He was about to crush them with his bare hands, but Tresa gave him a more civil method.

I didn't actually see him make this because I went downstairs. I didn't want to watch him make a mess crushing those oranges.

A few minutes later he came downstairs and brought me a drink.


This is Kieran's Orange Squash.
That's what he named it. Tresa didn't drink it, cause Kieran said "mama said it looks disgusting." So he brought it down to me.
It's not bad. Just not what you'd expect in an orange drink.
Lots of pulp.

I loved it! I thought it was brilliant snow day.