Cold and sunny

 This winter has been surprisingly mild. We have had plenty of highs that are above freezing, and have hardly had any really cold weather at all. So this week, even though the weather has been pretty normal for this time of year, felt very cold. But at least it has been bright and sunny and the snow has been sparkly.

Since it has been cold it has been much harder to get everyone outside. Most days we try to get out two times, but lately it has been a good day if we get out once. This afternoon I tried to get Maren and Linden outside for about an hour and a half (before finally succeeding). They kept yelling “no!”, and they were playing so nicely together I wasn’t about to argue. Especially when they decided to take a “nap” together in Linden‘s crib:

Who could possibly argue with that? ❤️

The Linden Show

 I know this isn’t fair to Maren but this post is going to be all about Linden, because she has reached the height of toddler hilarity.

Tonight at dinner She was trying so hard to figure out jokes. Months ago she made up a knock knock joke which was actually pretty sophisticated for such a young toddler. It went like this:

Linden: Knock knock

Me: Who’s there?

Linden: Banana 

Me: Banana who?

Linden: Pear!

Tonight, she made a joke that went like this:

Linden: Knock knock

Me: Who’s there?

Linden: What does sheeps say?

Me: What does sheeps say who?

Linden: Poop!

She definitely does not understand jokes quite yet, but succeeded at making everyone laugh :-)

A few days ago she decided to share her toys with a sleeping cat:

And my favourite which is so sad and also so cute: The other night we were reading a book and she burst into tears. I asked her what was wrong and eventually through sobs she was able to tell me that she was upset because she doesn’t have a pillow. All of the kids in the book we were reading have pillows. “Maren has a pillow mommy has a pillow daddy has a pillow, but Linden doesn’t have a pillow.” So we gave her a pillow, and she was so pleased. But she doesn’t use it. It takes up about 25% of the space in her crib, and she sleeps with her head just below it. However, she is certain she wants to keep it 😂

Winter storm

 Wednesday night we had a big winter storm, with wind gusts up to 126 km/h, and a mix of freezing rain and snow. There were lots and lots of power outages, and we had no power when we woke up on Thursday morning. 

We have experienced power outages here before, and typically power is restored within a couple of hours at most. But this time it was just our street and one street over that were affected, and with so many power outages affecting so many people, we were quite low priority. Maren’s school, across the street, had power so we sent Maren to school. When we still didn’t have power at 10 AM, Jeff, Linden, and I went to the university campus for the first time in months. I worked all day in my office and Jeff and Linden hung out in Jeff’s lab.

When the school day was over for Maren we still didn’t have power. We made a fire in the fireplace and tried to stay warm, but it became evident pretty quickly that that was not going to work. So we went to a hotel.

There wasn’t a ton to do but the kids figured out how to have fun.

It was the first time in a year that always slept anywhere besides our house. Linden probably doesn’t remember having slept anywhere except in her room. We did not sleep well. Fortunately, the power came back on overnight and we were able to go home for breakfast Friday morning.

Things have been pretty uneventful since then, which is just the way we like it.

Who needs J?

  And H is twice as nice as Q 😁

A new year

 Happy new year! Lots of people have said that 2021 has to be better than 2020. I am not in the business of predicting the future, so all I will say is that I am sure 2021 will be different than 2020.

We haven’t gotten out of the house much other than walks around our neighborhood, but a few days ago we went to The Royal Saskatchewan Museum. Technically it is still in our neighbourhood because it is only about half a kilometre from our house, but we hadn’t been in a while so it was something different. 

We celebrated New Year’s Eve with some homemade ice cream from a recipe in a cookbook my mom got me for Christmas, The Homemade Vegan Pantry. I was really unsure about the recipe because it is super simple and I have spent a lot of time trying to make good vegan ice cream and it isn’t always a simple endeavor. However, it turned out to be really good. We ate it with sprinkles 😊

I think I will use this basic recipe for my next ice cream attempt as well: I am planning to use the remnants of our gingerbread house, which we put in the freezer, to make a gingerbread cookie ice cream. I also made a super easy pancake mix from this cookbook, and we had pancakes this morning for breakfast which were really good. Once again I was a bit sceptical given how easy the recipe was, but it did not disappoint. Only two recipes so far, but two for two so I would definitely recommend this cookbook.

Last but not least, two super cute videos of Linden. If you only have time to watch one, I think you should watch the second one :-)