Jan 3 - now we are three

... or 4, if you count Abby.

Jeffrey, Sara and Emma left around 7:30 pm yesterday. Jeffrey had spent the afternoon sleeping and then they were driving all night. I'd expect them to get home shortly. The weather forecasts looked good along the route, i.e. no significant snow.

Emma was quite at home here, quite at home with Sandy and me. She was never 100% sure about David ... and she loved Abby. Her first word in the morning was always "Abba" -- she doesn't have the "I" sound down yet. She knows "Poppa" and "Nanna". We won't see her again until April but I'm sure that she'll remember us at this age. By the time they're back up in the summer she will be almost two years old. Wow, time flies.

Fishing was good yesterday, with two more pike ready for dinner. The first one was a nice one -- 1.25 pounds of meat on 3-4 pounds of fish. The second was smaller. Sometime in the last hour of the day I lost a minnow without raising the flag.

I went for a 3-wheeler ride mid-day getting down to but not too close to Caribou Creek. Jim asked me to check on whether the hunt camp down there was still standing, with all the snow that we've had and its flat roof ... it is. It was a cold run with the temperature not much about 0F. Today will be warmer, -9C/16F. That's balmy in comparison. It looks like we'll have cold weather out west too but of course that can change quickly at elevation and as close to the ocean as Whistler.

The rest of the month will go quickly. David returned before noon yesterday and will leave for Toronto tomorrow morning. We leave on Thursday for Whistler and will be back in Toronto on the 17th, here on the 18th. We leave for Toronto and then onwards to Florida on the 22nd. Before I know it I'll be biking again :). That's a strange thought as the sky starts to lighten over the frozen lake.

The barriers are gone. We don't have to high-step at the stairs anymore. By now Jeffrey and Sara would have been up with Emma ... it's going to be a much quieter day here. I'll be going to Mass for 10:30 in Britt. The next service that I attend will be next Saturday evening at Our Lady of the Mountain in Whistler, a much prettier setting !

We've been trying the various coffees that we brought up from The Green Beanery. So far I like the Sumatra best, which is the first one that we tried. Sandy sent some fresh roasted & ground coffee home with Jeffrey. David will take some as well so I'll be roasting again today. We'll have to get some more green beans before we head for Florida because we will probably bring the roaster with us. In Florida I'll roast beans out on the back patio since we don't have a kitchen fan that exhausts outside. It remains to be seen whether we buy another or just cart the thing back and forth. I did save the box. It cuts my pay-back time in half if I have to buy another of these things.

I made orange sherbet and frozen yogurt yesterday. Both were best when fresh made. Freezer temperature makes them hard. The sherbet wasn't quite "orangy" enough or perhaps it had frothed up too much in the blender before I did the freezing. The yogurt is delicious and good for you too -- what's not good about fat free yogurt + fat free milk + frozen raspberries + sugar, other than the sugar ? There's not much sugar either. This could well be another duplicate appliance that I'll need for Florida !

That's it ... I think.