Happy 2011!

Paul and I just got back from a week with my family celebrating Christmas, New Years, and time together. Everything was great!

On the 24th, we went to the Notre Dame cathedral here in Montreal for midnight mass. It was beautiful, but quite long and boring. At 2am or so, we got home to eat our 'révellion' and were so full and tired by 3am that we decided to save desert for breakfast! My sister made a traditional 'buche' that was delicious!

The 25th was spend opening presents, eating and watching Inception. A very relaxing day.

On the 26th, we had a family get together with my dad's side of the family. One of my cousins just got back from Australia, so we had a great time catching up. We opened more presents, ate more, and played games together. It was a great success!

The 27th was spent packing and planning for our family tradition - an expedition to a cabin with no running water or electricity. This year we went to La Forêt Montmorency, near Quebec City.

On the 28th we arrived and skied up to the cabin, it was supposedly 5 kilometers, but we got lost because the trails weren't marked. At one point, a patroller told us to take a short cut, which ended up not being one at all. He told us we'd be able to cross a river because he thought it was frozen or that there would be a bridge (I don't exactly remember the details) but it ended up being pretty wide, not frozen at all and there was no bridge in sight, so we had to go back a bit to go back to the original trail we were on. We ended up making it fine, and that night we discovered light painting! It was so much fun to think of new ideas for pictures, I wish I had some to show you, but they're all on my dad's camera. We also played papelitos. You can find out how to play here.

As we ate breakfast on the 29th, we saw some grey jays (birds) outside on a tree. My sister went out with some pumpkin seeds to see if they would eat out of her hand and they came really close! It seemed as though they weren't afraid of humans at all! My mom has a great picture of the moment. During the day, we explored a bit, cross-country skiing and hiking around. We found a rope bridge that we crossed. In the afternoon, the patroller who had gotten us super lost came by to say sorry! We all thought that was really sweet of him! The evening consisted of more games, some we made-up, and papelitos, of course.

On the 30th, we set off exploring again and found a steep trail that led up to an observation tower. We were able to see our cabin from the tower, which was neat. Paul has the pictures for this event. On the way down, we did some ski-sledding. We sat on our skis and slid down! Back at the cabin, we read, played sudoku and crossword puzzles and talked about anything and everything, including religion and politics. At one point, my dad screams: "Come outside and see this!" So we all obliged and saw a beautiful red fox. Similar to the jays we had seen previously, it was not afraid of us at all. Paul threw some snowballs in the foxes' direction to get it to come closer, and the fox came really close to us! My dad has the pictures for this event. Scattegories and papelitos brought our evening to a close.

At about 4am, my mom yelled out: "Paul, I think someone is in the cabin". What a way to wake us up! I have to explain that we were all sleeping in different areas of the cabin, which is why my mom called out to Paul and not my dad, who was sleeping outside (partly because he was hot and partly because he likes to do that kind of stuff). Also, we were all upstairs and my mom was sleeping downstairs, because she was too hot. You could think a small cabin in the woods in the winter would be cold, but we know how to work a wood stove. So Paul, being the great guy he is, wakes up and goes downstairs to check out the situation. My brother very intelligently, turns on his flashlight and checks to see if the front door was open, which it wasn't. Unknown intruder was ruled out pretty quick, but we all heard the noise. Now that we knew the animals around us weren't afraid, we all assumed it could be a porcupine or a raccoon, because it was creating such a racket! But no, it was the cutest little mouse! Paul saw it and showed us (we all got up to see) it was definitely my fault for not wrapping up my cookies and putting them away. So this tiny mouse was taking a huge cookie back to its' home. It was the cutest thing ever! It kind of looked like this: We drove back to Montreal on the 31st, with a stop at Tim Hortons. I love the picture on the doughnut box, I feel like it is the epitome of a Canadian winter: 

We also stopped at the Madrid, a crazy restaurant on Highway 20 with dinosaurs for decoration:

We rang in the New Year by washing our dirty selves and dirty clothes and watching the 'Bye bye'. All in all, it was a great week!