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.