Finally!

Hello one and all!

Much has happened since my last entry here, I've been very slack in updating this. I said Winter had arrived in my last post. Well, it snowed once before I went back to New Zealand, melted the next day, then was snowless until just a few days before I came back! The cold has finally set in since I returned, averaging -15C.

In the weekend I was over at the Brinkman's place and there was a blizzard that lasted most of the day. It was so nice feeling warm and cozy inside, watching the snow blow everywhere outdoors! Unfortunately, because of the bad weather, there was a serious accident a couple of kms away on the 401 highway where an oil tanker fell over and burst into flames. There were around 20 cars involved in the crash, 2 killed and 10 hospitalised. Snow isn't all fun and games.

On Sunday I went with John, Evelyn and Sara to Stratford, ON, about 3 hours away. Sara is interning with a church there for the next year so we were dropping she and her stuff off at her new place. Stratford is on the snow belt and is there ever A LOT of snow - it felt like Antarctica! With the snow falling and the snow blowing around off the ground from the wind, there was snow EVERYWHERE, white as far as the eye can see! Driving conditions were pretty bad for an hour of the way home but I felt safe becase John is a good driver and the truck is 4X drive.

I had SUCH a great time back in New Zealand, it was so good to see everyone again and hard to leave! The summer was a fairly wet, cold one but there were a few hot days which were lovely.
My whole family (all 10 of us!) went camping at Puponga in Golden Bay. We were near Farewell Spit, the most Northern point of the South Island, it was absolutely beautiful. It was the first time the whole family had been together in two years, so it was really great to all spend time together. We saw in the New Year with some other campers on the beach across the road with a bonfire, it was very cozy. Emma, Grace, Katherine, Sophie and I went on a 1.5 hour horse trek across the beach at low tide, and over some hills. It was a lot of fun, even though it rained for the last half of the ride! We had pretty sore backsides for the next few days - out of shape for riding! :)

I've been back in Canada for two weeks but if feels much longer. Not in a bad way, I'm just back into routine and Winter...hee hee. On Friday I went skiing with Monica and the kids which was a lot of fun. I hadn't down-hill skied in about 9 years so was a little bit apprehensive about it but had a great day. Monica gave me some pointers on how to turn and slow down -- it makes soooo much difference feeling in control. Stuart let me use his mini-skis and I'm sold on them, they are so much more manoeuvrable (that word looks strange but spell check told me it's right! :-P ), which may have added to the day of happy skiing!

There are a lot of photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/amy.winnington if you'd like to have a look at happenings from the past couple of months.

I will try to write more on here soon.

Au revoir!

:)