I know, I know - the blog hasn't been updated for a few weeks - mea culpa!! but honestly, we've had various internet/computer problems recently and then what with visiting sisters and friends and life in general, I'm only getting to this now so apologies ok??
Well, where to start? We had a couple of interesting incidents recently here. The first involved a small mouse. I had noticed some evidence of a nocturnal visitor in the kitchen - didn't mention it to the kids but went and got a couple of traps (don't you hate even the look of those things?). The trap was discreetly placed in one of the kitchen cupboards with some peanut butter (crunchy rather than smooth) which apparently mice love - well Canadian mice anyway. Next morning Paddy checked and the peanut butter was gone, the trap had been sprung but no sign of our friend! We re-set the trap and continued to check it for the following couple of days but nothing happened and there was no sign of any night visits which we thought was kind of strange. Was just the snapping of the trap enough to frighten the mouse away we wondered??
A couple of days later we arrived home and Ellen went to go into the kitchen - next thing she let out this blood-curdling scream and ran back into the living room hysterical - we couldn't get any sense out of her but I reckoned the mouse had finally made a reappearance. Paddy and I went to the kitchen and there was the mouse, dragging his back legs across the floor painfully slowly - obviously the trap had broken his back but he'd managed to get away. Well, I don't know if any of you have ever seen a paraplegic mouse before, but its not a pretty sight! I'm ending this particular little story here and lets just say that all's well that ends well................
The next thing that happened was Laura accidentally setting herself on fire. It was actually so scary and she/we were very lucky - she came in from work and put the kettle on and was chatting to Ellie and I in the kitchen. I looked up from sorting the recycling (see how exciting my life is??) and told her not to stand with her back to the cooker so she moved. Next thing there are flames leaping up her back and her coat was on fire! she dropped to the floor and I rolled her while Ellen screamed her head off (she got an awful fright) and we got the flames out. Needless to say her coat was destroyed and her cardigan underneath but she was ok - luckily she still had the coat on as if she didn't and it was one less layer............. lets not go there........... Thank God it wasn't that serious, but it was a timely lesson to all of the dangers of gas rings.
Now to our recent visitors (no, not more mice - humans!). Our first guests to Kingston were Sinead, Robyn and Ben who came for a weekend. It was great fun - the kids loved having their cousins to stay and all went to see a Christmas movie together. We had a short tour around Kingston (I could see my sister from the "Big City" was a little surprised by the size of our new hometown!) and Sinead and I got to have a few cups of coffee and chats so we were all happy with our weekend.
Then Aedeen came to stay - major excitement all round - someone from HOME!!! It was really great to have her here for a whole week! We did our Kingston tour to point out some of the places of interest which have become part of our lives now: Ellen and Patrick's schools, Paddy's office at the CYA, Laura's shop on the main street, the Gym and YMCA - she even came to our ice-skating lessons at the Invista Centre. We had several catchup sessions over large cups of coffee and even larger glasss of wine, nice long lunches at various locations, some fun meals out with the whole family, a few visits to the local bars, we had coffee in my Canadian friend Beth's house, we had Laura's friend Rachel over for dinner, a swedish massage, a few martinis and lots and shopping!! all in all, we thoroughly enjoyed her visit and are all hoping she liked Kingston enough to come back again some day (right Aedeen??!) By the way, the plane in the photos is the one that goes between Toronto and Kingston which Aedeen came and went on!
Just after Aedeen left, the snow came! It co-incided with the opening of the ice-rink in front of the Town Hall and the lighting of the Christmas tree so it was a pretty magical event! We had had a few snow flurries during the week and a big snow storm had been forecast, but to be honest we didn't think it would happen so suddenly. We were ice-skating down town after dinner the evening beforehand and there were just light flurries. We went to bed with no snow and lo and behold - woke up looking at the scene you see on a Christmas card!! There was plenty of snow (10cms) which transformed the place into a winter wonderland overnight. The kids were so excited (me too!).......... Ellen's school declared a 'snow day' but Patrick's was open - he didn't mind as all the kids just go to school in their snowsuits and they had a ball at break time making snow forts and having snowball fights. It snowed for about two days then stopped and the snow is now mostly in banks at the road side (courtesy of the fleet of busy snow ploughs) and is pretty much frozen solid as the temperatures have not risen above freezing for the past couple of weeks. It was -9 on Friday which with the wind chill factor was -15!!! our coldest so far........ we'd better get used to it - thankfully the house is nice and cosy. We're hoping it'll be a white Christmas - apparently its quite usual so fingers crossed.
