J-8

Yessssssssssss, I'm coming back to the motherland in 8 days, I can't wait! Clara has made clear progress with the potty training, it' really cool. Her hair has grown enough for ponytails now, she's so cute. I'm going to put up some pictures tonight. Doug is flying over to France on saturday night, his "competitions" are on monday, after which he will be working with his old colleagues in Orsay for a few days, until Clara and I get there. Then we're off to my dad's for a few days and then to my mum's for a few days, while Doug spends the week in Toulouse.
This summer will definetely be our last summer in Quebec, so for those of you who would like to come for a holiday this is your last chance. We will be on holiday between July 10th to july 20th and be renting a cottage in the countryside with some friends if anyone would like to join us.
In August Doug will be attending an international astrophysics conference in Rio de Janeiro and I will be joining him for a holiday, if anyone is interested to come and have some fun in Brazil.
That's all for now, hopefully I will be posting new photos of Clara and her ponytails tonight!
See ya!

Update

Salut tout le monde,
L'emploi du temps est charge en ce moment, Doug bosse la plupart du temps, il se prepare pour les concours fin mars, et essaie de finir mille choses en meme temps. Le voyage en France s'annonce super bien, Clara va pouvoir passer du temps avec ses grands-parents, je suis trop contente, et aussi avec sa tata et sa cousine Elsa.
Le printemps commence a pointer timidement le bout de son nez, la neige a un peu fondu, ca fait du bien.
Bon je vais au dodo, bonne nuit!

Amazing aquarium

We went to the Quebec Aquarium yesterday and observed some amazing creatures, as you can judge by the photos. Don't forget to check-out the rest of the photos on picasa...

Emilie loved the sea horses and jelly fish most.




Not as much snow this year as there was last year, but still, here's the view of our house!

Bye for now.

Out and about in the Frozen North.

Long time no blog. Sorry.


Clara has grown up quite a bit and is quite talkative. Here she is grinning with her friend Babouche (in her hand).


Here's Babouche up close.



This weekend we went out snowshoeing without snowshoes. The snow was very compact as it hasn't snowed very much. Clara had great fun.




So did Doug.
and Emilie.

We walked along a river with about 1.5 meters of snow on top of it. The river would break out now and again in a waterfall or a pool.


We stopped after about an hour in a wooden refuge complete with wood fire. Clara had a banana, she made the other hikers in the refuge chuckle.


That's all for now. BCNU.

Santa Claus

The weekend was excellent, starting with the dinner and dance at the farm, and a ride from Anapharm on a yellow school bus. We played games to win prezzies and had lots of fun singing and partying!

On Saturday Anapharm's Santa was handing out prezzies so Clara was there to receive hers, but she was scared of Santa and wasn't happy sitting on his lap. On Saturday night, Christelle (a french girl from work) and Guillaume (her boyfriend) came for dinner and we had a really nice time. Doug treated us to his best bread yet, and made butterscotch pudding for desert, yummy...

On Sunday the toy library's Santa gave his present to Clara, which went a bit better than the day before, and we sat down to watch a little play with Mrs Claus and rudolf the red-nosed reindeer, it was really cute.

Clara made a friend called Emily, and we made friends with her mum called Yvonne, who is from Toronto.

For the last week we have been under around 40 cm of snow. Last night we got a nice layer of ice on top of that! Here's Doug braving the elements to clear a path for his family.

Meanwhile, Clara has a new interest in fashion. Here she is showing off her latest collection.

Happy Birthday Anthony!

Gros bisous a toute la famille Maignal par la meme occasion. Virginie, appelle-moi quand tu as le temps, j'ai l'impression que ca fait une eternite qu'on ne s'ait pas parle!
Here not much is new, Doug is giving a lecture tomorrow and lost all the work he had prepared for it today when Powerpoint crashed. This means he has to do it all over again tonight. Poor Doug...
We're expecting another 25 cms of snow before tomorrow night, great. As if there wasn't enough already! Tomorrow night my team and I are going to Ferme Djerba for dinner followed by a disco, what a program!
Clara's being naughty so I'd better go sort her out.
Bye for now.

Thank you Liz

Thank you so much Mamna for the sleeping suit, it's very pretty and fits her perfectly!
We're having lots of snow at the moment, it actually took me an hour and a half to get home from work because of the snow. Another 15 to 30 cm are expected to fall before tomorrow night, it's a bit early in the winter to be seeing this amount of snow, and also the temperature was still around -15 today, which is below normal. It's now gone up to -8, what a relief!
Doug made a really nice loaf of bread today, the best so far, he's really happy. He's going to carry on experimenting with breadmaking, the ultimate goal being to succeed in making a perfect baguette, which is really difficult, but I know he'll get there...
By the way I'm sure you've noticed that the blog is only in English nowadays, well, that's because i don't have time to translate everything and we've put a useful little tool at the bottom, to translate our messages, it's not perfect but it helps...
My Christmas party on Saturday was really good, the dinner was nice enough and the band was excellent, I couldn't be dragged away from the dancefloor.
I'm really quite tired this week so I'm going to try to get to bed early tonight. Yeah right!
More soon from Les Marshaux!