Post-Christmas follies

Happy New Year everyone! Pascale is still on school break. They have several long breaks in the school year here, rather than one really long summer break. Pascale has been out of school since December 12, and she goes back on January 9. We are somehow managing to fill the time. It helps a lot that we were away for a week, and that Bernie was off work until after New Year's. While we were eating dinner the other night, Pascale asked why we could not just live in a hotel. Wouldn't that be nice?

Last weekend, we all went to the Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park. It's this little carnival with lots of rides that they put on to amuse the kids during the school break. It was really nice to go there and be outside for a while. One thing that's different here is that they don't tell you which rides your kids can go on. There's no sign outside the rides saying "You must be this tall to go on this ride." It's up to the parent to determine whether their kid can handle it. Josephine went on several rides that she probably should not have, but she did just fine.

Here are some pics of the girls opening their Christmas presents. We opened gifts on the morning of the 28th, which was the day after we returned from our trip. Josephine got a new blanket for Christmas, so every time she gets in bed now, she looks at her blanket and says, "Santa!"




Playing with the new presents:



Here's the Winter Wonderland. In the first photo, that's actually Josephine in the red car:




At the Violett Melchett Childrens Center: