Vallée des fantômes

High in the Monts-Valin, there is a special place called La Vallée des fantômes or the Valley of the Ghosts. This snowshoeable trail is well known for it's incredible precipitations (up to six meters of snow!). When snow falls, the evergreen trees are so covered, they really look like ghosts. As for the others, their branches are delicately covered with crystals of ice, transforming them into «mummies». At last, after a climb up to an altitude of 980 m, we are faced with a 369 degree of the valleys around. No words can describe it well enough, so here are some pictures.

Christmas

Here we are, in the Saguenay for Christmas. A lovely celebration. Great food, great gifts and great company. Pierre and Sharon talked with us from Australia over skype while we impatiently waited for midnigt. We are planing to eat leftovers for another month, but we are not complaining because they are delicious! Merry Chritmas!

Trim up the tree

Chritmas is almost here, so we have put up our tree! Since we are staying at grand-maman and grand-papa's house the tree is at their place. Now we are ready for Chritmas!

Under water

School is finaly over and we are in La Baie at last. On our way here, we stoped in québec city to visit the uncles and the aunts. We also stopped by the aquarium to admire the fish. we saw ugly eels, many types of fish, seals, polar bears, and waleruses that tried to sing jinglebells to us. We also saw amazing jellyfish, floating about, and walked inside the aquarium thanks to a glass tube.

We also visited the rest of Québec city very quickly. We slid down an ice run whose speed was estimated to 60 km/h ! At last, we admired the Chateau Frontenac from outside before continuing our journey to the Saguenay.

St Catherine's Day

Today, the 25th of November, is St-Catherine's Day. There are many stories about this French-Canadian celebration. Some say that it was St Catherine who made candy to attract children to her school, others say it was St Marguerite Bourgeoys who made candy to celebrate her school's birthday. Anyhow, now was our turn to make taffy, with grandma coaching us over Skype. The picture is not very good, but the taste is delicious!

Quiet!

I don't know if this is a tradition in whatever part of the world you might happen to be right now, but in Toronto, on Friday November 20th, there is an activity called the Vow of Silence. To participate, you must promise so not talk for 24 hours, to raise awareness against child slavery. I am still suffering from the side effects of this, and every time I open my mouth to speak, alarms go off in my head. Unfortunately, someone disconnected these alarms on the day of, because I spoke accidentally once or twice (Renée won't let me forget). I hope the world is a little more aware now, thanks to me.

Framed and fabulous

It's very satisfying when your hard work is finally finished. This is the case for my two needle points which are now framed. The company that framed them made a little mistake and framed the blue poppies upside-down, but it will soon be fixed. I am now working on a hedgehog and a knitted sweater.

You see, Sharon, now it does look like a cat.

Pumpkin parade

After Halloween, what could be more fitting than a pumpkin parade? For this annual event at a nearby park, the neighborhood brings out their pumpkins and places them all in a long line. This year, we counted nearly 2000! The next day (November second), the city comes and takes them away. What a source of compost!

Halloween

I know that this is a little late, but I still think that I should tell you about Halloween. This year, I went as a jellyfish and Renée as Charlie Chaplin. She was going to go with her friend Marie as Dupont and Dupond, but Marie was sick all week and couldn't come. We celebrated with our neighbors Sauvanne and Arianne and their parents Steven and Kirsten. We ate buzzard, liver and newt hearts before stuffing ourselvs with candy. The jellyfish is a little windswept in this picture, but still looking good.

What to do with paper

This weekend, Renée, mom and I engaged in various activities, but our main shopping expedition was to the Japanese Paper Place. The reason for this was their annual «create your own snack bag» event, where you get your pick on all their paper scraps and cram them into a small plastic bag for five dollars. the only condition is that you must be able to then close it. Of course, when confronted with such a bargain, we went crazy an now have nearly a year's supply
of lovely Japanese paper. Our question now is : what to do with it?

Thanksgiving

To celebrate Thanksgiving, the Biders in general have a very particular tradition. For as far as I can remember, we have always gone up to the Laurentians in the old house there. This year was no exception. We met up with all the other cousins and, like always, had a good time. We hiked by The Creek and Papy's House. As usual, we only had a general idea of where we were going, but at least we made it back in time for turkey. On one of these hikes, Grandma and Grandpa's dog Toby, a very peculiar beast, had a slight misunderstanding with a porcupine. He came back with quills in his chin, poor thing. after dinner, we played kick-the-can in the dark.

Tonight, we celebrate thanksgiving again since we were a day early last time.

Nuit Blanche

Nuit Blanche is a very popular arts festival here in T.O. Of course, Renée, Mom, Dad and I don't stay up all night, but many people do. We roamed around the streets of downtown Toronto only until 11:30 this weekend, but we are still exhausted! These were the highlights.

-Mom and I learned the Charleston and the Lindy hop at the Toronto Reference Library;
-We admired the Rabbit Balloon, a gigantic silver bunny created by Jeff Koons, in the Eaton Center;
-Were blinded by the word «Wind» written in light bulbs and suspended between the two buildings at City Hall
-Listened to an «audio parade» by Anita Hamilton;
-Peeped into a laundromat kaleidoscope by Nika Mistruzzi.

I must catch up on lost sleep now, good night!

Racing

The big sailing event of the year is, no doubt, the TSCC's race around the island. This was my first year competing. We did not exactly go around the Toronto island, but along it's side. I steered on the way back while dad controlled the spinnaker(large sail in the front, good for when the wind is behind you). Dad and I finished 7th out of 11 in our category. The picture is the view from the front of our Waferer? Wafer? Wefre? Anyway, our boat.

Save the sea turtles!

Last weekend, Sauvanne, Arianne, Renée and I organized a yard sale of most of our old toys and things. All the profits went to the Canadian Sea turtle network to help protect the Leatherback sea turtles. After sitting outside for five and a half hours, we managed to raise around 230$ for our cause. We are getting together this week to write to the organisation and send them the cheque!

This picture is a detail from our poster.

Air show

We are lucky to have our green roof for many reasons. One of them is because it is straight under the path of the planes during the Air show. Sitting on our lawn chairs with our neighbors Sauvanne and Arianne. Some F-18 jets got so close, we could see the writing on them. I do not have pictures of them, sadly, but here are a few good ones. We have been to the Shack and found a neat variety of creepy-crawlies like this caterpillar and this Dragonfly larva. School has started and Pictures will follow.

C"est l'aviron (it's the paddle)

If I have not been in touch with anyone for a while it's because we have been back-country canoe-camping along the French River. We had a wonderful time paddling about signing songs and listening to Nancy Drew: The Haunted Bridge, which I read out loud for the entertainment of the surrounding canoes. Although I didn't do much rowing, I was quite hoarse at the end of the day. We tried out new cooking skills on our camp stove. We had some disasters, like our brownies, who burnt to a crisp, but our pizzas were the envy of our all fellow campers. It's so much fun to float down rapids or jump off cliffs, but we were very happy to relax at the Pine Cove Lodge before coming back home.

To the cabin

For the past few days, we have been up at the shack. A lovely place to be. We swam in the lake, swung on the swings, got nibbled by mosquitoes, and hunted for frogs in the marsh. This is a picture of the lake at night and our sailboat, the Béluga optimiste

Summer wanderings

This is a slideshow of our summer wanderings in Québec.

At the camp

Last week, from Tuesday to Friday, was the six grader's annual end-of-year trip. After a seven and a half hour drive, we finally got to the camp where we were staying. As soon as we stepped out of the bus, we were sweped up into a whirlwind of activities lasting from 7:30 AM to 9:00 PM every day. Among these were archery, rock climbing, swimming (shhh! no one is supposed to know that!), survival in the woods giant stratego and hebertism, a sport wich involves poles , ropes trees and falls. It is also a system they used in the navy to keep soliders in shape for combat. Ingoring the blood-thirsty mosquitos, We all had an awesome time!

Archery

One of the Herbertism courses

Unicycling

Lately, our babysitter Celeste has introduced us to the unicycle club. Me and Rennée are practicing very hard on borrowed unis, but dad, who seems to have some experience already, is planning to try Unicycle basketball soon. This is a sport that the club organizes at the end of every meeting and looks EXTREMELY difficult. I can ride half the gym without falling now, but it is a lot of work. I will post some pictures as soon as I figure out how to plug dad's camera in.

Francourse

Yesterday, the third graders and up from our school headed out to Brampton for the annual Francourse. This is a 5k race for kids from first grade to eigth, and this year, 1000 kids showed up. Unfortunately, it just so happens that on that particular day, it was over 30 degrees C and the whole cours was in a field, under the bioling sun. Still, I finished in 32 minutes and Renée in 30. The fastest runner was a third-grader from our school, ending in 17 minutes!
All our friends tiered, sunburnt but happy after the race.

Exercise video

This is our home-made exercise video filmed in Turkey. We think it is hilarious, and so I wanted to share it with you all.

A fantastic trip

I will never be able to say everything that has happened on our trip to Turkey in one post, so I will sum it up. We have been all around the west stopping in Istanbul, Ankara, Goreme, Antalya Kas, Pamukale, Selcuk, Bodrum, Bergamon, Bursa and back to Istanbul, making a loop of around 3000 km. We swam in the mediterrainien and in the ancient Roman baths, diped our feet in the calcium waters, explored cave dwellings, saw magnificent temples and really tiered ourseklves out. Touring Turkey with Pierre and Sharon was fun, and now I can't wait to go to Hong-Kong in two years! Here are some pictures in order.

Attaturk's toom, Ankara

Goreme
Goreme as well

In the Meditiranien

The only slightly renovated roman baths in Pamukale

The library at Ehpesus

Dad as a gladiator

A new adventure

We have tickets! we are now officially going to turkey! R.C and I are very exited, because dad has told us we will be flying quite near the north pole! We are taking a 14 hour plane ride to Istanbul, staying there for four days, then taking a train to Ankara, from witch Pierre and Sharon will take us visiting the rest of the country. I just can't wait!

Higher!

I got my pogo stick for Christmas. I have been practicing for around three weeks, interrupted only by eating, sleeping, and a case of appendicitis. The record for this house still stands at 143 jumps and 16 bruises (but I have a suspicion that the bruises might come from throwing myself onto our ice slide at school). Now I must be off to continue my training!