Ottawa Winter Festival

One of the few perks of living somewhere really cold is that there are really fun things going on to try to keep peoples spirits up.  Lately, there have been winter festivals going on in Montreal, Quebec City and Ottawa,  Last weekend Forest and I went to the Ottawa Winter Festival.  It was really fun but crowded.  Ottawa is the capital of Canada so we also got to see the Parliament building.  We were only allowed to go in five rooms and the peace tower.  The parliament building had burned down but the original library was still intact.  The library was my favorite room. 

The Parliament Building- I was really hoping to see some mounties but there weren't any

Library

House meeting room

Senate meeting room- the chair upfront is for the Queen

View of Ottawa from the Peace Tower

Leah eating a beavertail

Deliciousness

Us at the ice sculpture contest

Ice sculpture- theater heads

Ice Sculpture

Rideau Canal- the world's largest skating rink

Skiing at Oka National Park

On Saturday Jan. 29 Forest and I ventured back to Oka, this time to go skiing.  Thankfully, everyone was fully clothed this time. When we arrived we rented skis and then went for about 5 miles before stopping to have lunch.  After lunch we went another four miles and then decided to call it a day.  We had a really great time sking (apart from my wipeout down one of the hills) the trails were beautiful and the weather was great.  A huge ice slide was set up in the park and both Forest and I decided to give it a whirl before we left.  It looked kind of like a death trap.  It reminded me of one of those slides that you would see at a fair and then ride down racing your friends except this one was covered in ice.  Instead of riding down on nice potato sacks we were given little plastic squares that looked like they might fall apart.  It was pretty fun but a little scary.

Forest sledding down the ice slide

He survived!

Forest skiing

People would wear these and then put their kids in the back.  I tried to talk Forest into wearing one of these and pulling me behind him.

Lake

Tree

Woods