Braving Winter

This branch very handily caught Juniper on what would have undoubtedly been an unpleasant plummet to the ground

Happy Family Day!  Here in Ontario, we are enjoying a nice extended long February weekend, trying our hardest to ignore the ridiculously cold temperatures.  We were joined on Friday evening by my sister Faye, fresh off the plane from Freetown, Sierra Leone.  As she is fond of saying, she left Freetown in 30°C weather, and descended into -30°C weather. I outfitted her in extra winter gear, and she was more than happy to embrace this extreme bit of winter while she's here:

*almost* too cold to play outside.

I took this photo from inside, because no one wanted to take their mittens off to actually snap an outside shot

Highly frosted/ice-caked windows 

Nice and warm and snuggly and pyjamaed inside

Yesterday, Clark and the kids and I decided to check out a museum we'd never been to before: the Agriculture museum.  It was pretty cool!  Literally.  It was so cold, in fact, that we had the place almost entirely to ourselves, and only took our winter gear off twice -- though the barns were warmer than the bitter outdoors, they were not what you would call "balmy".  But it was very interesting, there were a bunch of animals to enjoy and learn about, and we will most certainly go back on a slightly warmer day.

There were a bunch of animals that would normally not be inside, except that all the outside water was frozen solid

Special activity: making little bird feeders

Finished product!

In the tractor exhibit.  This was actually a bit of a "ride", but it was too cold to work.

a social little calf

A little calf born just a few hours before we got there, and here tired mama

I would say that tomorrow we'll be returning to life as usual, but that is, in fact, not true at all.  The kids will be going back to school, and Clark back to work, but Faye will still be here, and we'll be joined in the evening by Clark's sister Theresa, who is also coming for a visit!  It will be a very full house. Then, on the weekend, everyone will leave me all at once: Faye is taking off for Toronto (before heading back to Africa), Theresa will go back home, and Clark is off to New Orleans for a conference.  So. Not a typical week at all. In the meantime, Juniper will study up and make sure she's got things under control:

A little long weekend reading.

Stay warm, friends!  Have a great weekend!