Ella's 10th Birthday Party

Hi everyone!

Yesterday was my 10th birthday. It was my first and probably last birthday in Canada, unless we come back some other day. I invited my school friends Jamie, Lindsey, Cheyenne, Allison, Elise, Emily and Summer, as well as some girls who live behind us, Ana and Sophie. Ana and Sophie came first to help organize and make fairy bread. Then Allison and Lindsey arrived because they live around the corner. After them, everyone else started arriving.

First we went out and had a snack, then it started raining so we went inside and I opened my presents and got a lot of really cool presents. I got lots of Littlest Pet Shop things and a Littlest Pet Shop Digital Pet. I also got a CD player and a bunch of lollypops from Elise. I got a bunch of little rectangular cards that you could write on and give to your friends. Some of them said Merry Christmas or Thank You. From Allison I got a soccer ball with the Canadian flag, a red and white Canadian Frisbee, an 8 ball that answers your questions and a Canadian thing that you put in the lawn and when it’s windy it spins around.

I got so so so much more presents that I can’t tell you them all because it’ll take up too much space! . After the present opening we started playing football, but that didn’t last very long. We played Soccer/Baseball (sometimes known as Kickball), all us girls and Jordan against Nic and his friend Chris. Nic’s team was winning!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Then we decided to play Pin The Tail on The Kangaroo. First Emily was winning, Elise came along and came closer, then Jordan got right on the spot, what a coincidence! We then played Freeze Tag (if you don’t know what it is, it’s tips and if you get tipped you are frozen. You can only get unfrozen if someone unfreezes you, or if everyone is frozen you can throw your hat or shoe and if someone catches it they are unfrozen and can unfreeze you). Nic and Chris were ‘it’ and soon got everyone frozen. They didn’t like the throwing hat idea and if someone missed the hat or shoe they carried them around with them and didn’t give them back. Nic took Jordan’s shoe and me and Jordan refused to be frozen until he got it back!

Next we had dinner and we had hot dogs and sausage rolls and ‘ketchup’ (Tomato sauce). We also had fairy bread, fruit sticks, Vegemite sandwiches(Mum ate all these!!) TimTams and lots of candy( ie lollies!). We forfeited Kickball and played Charades. It didn’t last too long because we decided to play a game where you and your partner put a balloon between your back and race to the bucket without dropping it. There were two teams and our team lost because the other team had Nic and Chris. After that we had cake, a really nice marble cake with a boomerang decorated in pretty flowers. It was really nice and after that everyone started leaving. The party ended at 7:30pm but Allison stayed until 8:30pm because she lived around the corner and could stay until her parents wanted her home. We went to bed at 11:00pm and Chris slept over.

Ella

Ottawa

We had a lovely weekend in Ottawa in April.We wonderered where all the snow had gone since the last time we visited for the Winterlude festival, and saw the city in a whole new way. After a near historic record year for snow it disappeared remarkably quickly. What a superb weekend we had weather wise too with temperatures in the mid 20's!

We stayed with a Canadian family whom we didn’t know but welcomed us into their lovely home. They have also done an exchange in Australia and now billet homeless Australians when they visit Ottawa. So kind! We spent Saturday doing a little essential shopping (ie Ella’s birthday presents) and eating (Moroccan for lunch, Thai for tea) and just revelling in the hustle and bustle of the beautiful city of Ottawa. Sunday we had breakfast Canadian style (ie real maple syrup, bacon and bananas) with our hosts and then headed off for the Museum of Civilization.

This was basically an all day event as there was so much to see and do there. It had a great kids section of international travel where the kids and myself spent most of our time. Ivan snuck off to get a bit of an insight into Canadian aboriginal history and culture.

Sugar Shack - Real Maple Syrup

We almost didn't get to see an authentic sugar shack producing Maple Syrup (except for Nic - who forgot to invite his family!) However, our neighbour, Eugene, wandered over one evening to tell us that one of his friends was currently making syrup. We all followed Eugene and Maddison to Paul's rustic sugar shack and they got us out to work straight away.

We checked the pails on the maple trees for maple sap and emptied the sap into larger pails that was taken to the Sugar Shack via a network of hoses. Some of the maple sap looked clear ,other trees had a richer golden tinge. Funnily enough the sap comes out pretty tasteless and runny and it’s not until it’s boiled up and reduced does it have the beautiful syrupy flavour and thickness. This means that a lot more sap is collected than it actually makes and considering the labour intensive collection and the reduction in sap once boiled, it’s perfectly understandable why real maple syrup is so expensive. It takes about 44 litres of sap to make a litre of syrup! (We were even lucky enough to get some free syrup and are currently enjoying it as often as we can eat pancakes!)