A Great Canadian Day To End Our Year

Living in Australia really suits us as a family.  We love the sunny days and the fact that our house is less than 10min drive from a beautiful beach where we spend as much time as we can swimming in the clear southern ocean and playing on the sandy shore.  Our kids love the water and sand!  And much of our past 11 months was spent not only in tropical climates but also included lots of beach time too. Our kids have no experience with cold climate activities such as ice and snow!

 

So much of our time in Vancouver was spent embracing their Canadian heritage.  Our girls already took to ice skating like a true Canuck and they were eager to spend more time playing in the snow.  As per most of our time here, we rounded up some cousins and drove the 20min from downtown Vancouver up to Cypress Mountain for their ‘Sliding Area’.

Bundled in borrowed snow pants, winter boots, hats, and gloves for the 0 degree Celsius temperature, adults and children bounded onto the snow-covered slopes on the morning of New Year’s Eve with a few toboggans of different shapes and sizes in tow.The $10 per child fee got them and an accompanying adult access to 3 gentle sliding hills, allneatly separated by snow banks.  Two handy sets of steps were cut into the sides of the slopes that led you back to the top where staff ensured that everyone was orderly and safety conscious prior to setting off down the slope.  And the best part was that this was an ‘under 6 yrs of age’ area so rambunctiousness was virtually non-existent.  (There’s an adjoining ‘Tubing Area’ for adults and kids 8yrs + which looked like a lot of fun!)

The Tubing Area

Maddy and Yasmine, together with their cousins Winston, Nicolas and his cousins Jaylyn and Mikey, spent the next 2 hours enjoying the great snowy outdoors, like the true Canadians they all are!  Maddy even found that her recent experiences riding down waterslides helped with her tobogganing technique.  She was fearless in sliding down the slopes either head first, backwards or on the toboggan fully loaded with her sister and cousins.  The dads even got into the act by banding together to form a ‘pit crew’ for the kids, ensuring that they got a fast starting push down the hill!

All aboard with their cousins.

We had a great ‘Canadian Day’ tobogganing on the mountain even if Yasmine was a tad disappointed at not being able to make a snowman due to the snow being too ‘powdery’.  And being in the company of Aunts, Uncles and cousins (1^st and 2^nd) made it even better.  We are so lucky to have added these ‘Nordic’ activities to our collection of amazing experiences of 2011!   A big ‘THANK YOU’ to our Canadian family and friends for helping make our three-week visit to Vancouver a highlight of our past 11 months of travel.  What will 2012 bring??!!