Gagnante inattendue du Coco Concours

Pour la deuxième année, la boutique de David le Cordonnier et de Mariane la Bijoutière ont organisé un Coco Concours de décoration d'oeufs de Pâques.
La popularité de la première édition avait fait son chemin: il y eut beaucoup plus de participants, autant dans la catégorie Adultes qu'Enfants.
Quelle fut donc notre surprise, le soir du dévoilement des gagnants d'entendre le nom de "Lily Taillefer" pour le 1er prix du jury dans la catégorie Enfants pour sa création "Printemps et fontaine" (visible sur la photo avec les plumes bleues qui tiennent lieu de fontaine).
Alice a aussi participé avec sa simple et ingénieuse création intitulée "Oeuf-volution" (la minuscule antilope qui sort de l'oeuf cassé).

Thank you, Ottawa bunch, for a wonderful Easter weekend !

Thank you Janet, Colin, Rowan, Teagan and Griffin for welcoming us into your wonderful house full of fun and art ! Thank you for introducing the four of us (Rachel, Lily, Alice and me) to the great fun of decorating Easter cookies. You are the heart of sunshine and hospitality (as brilliantly portrayed above by Janet's cookie) !
I am sure the combined loving vibrations of our two families have contributed to a "rapprochement" between our two provinces which will soon lead to a NDP victory on election day and to our land becoming less reluctant ! (haha)

Noteworthy Easter cookies

When Colin produced this outstanding flower, the standard was set for everyone to try and emulate...
Rachel's unique feather-like swirls were then developed...
with the pointilliste approach experimented by several of us (here me)
with disasters along the way, of course... (here the "depressed frog", also by me ;-)
and possibly the masterpiece of them all: a red-winged blackbird by Rowan-the-Great !

Easter Cookies

Everybody participated in the great Easter cookie production at Aylmer Street. Here we see Rachel (her first time decorating Easter cookies) with Rowan (a veteran Easter-cookie artist) and Mika, a good friend of Teagan's.
All sorts of glorious shapes had been baked in advance by Janet and Colin, so the hordes of artists could express their full unbridled creativity with a variety of motifs and coloured icings. Egg shapes were the favourite.

Easter Eggs

What a most perfect Easter weekend we spent at Colin and Janet's house, with Rowan, Teagan and Griffin in full form, along with - oh bonus! - our beloved Meo.

The celebrations included everything one might wish for on Easter Day: chocolate egg hunt, hard-boiled eggs decoration with various inks and wax pencils, and - a novelty for the Taillefer-Harrises - Easter cookie painting (see following blog entry). Thank you soooooo much you Ottawa bunch !

Lily as an Environmental Activist

Another statement left by the committee leader on the dinner table... for everyone to peruse and ponder :-)

St-Étienne de Bolton

We had a marvelous week-end in the Eastern townships with Marie-Claude and Alejandro. With two very magical snow-shoe expeditions in the spring woods. Alice took a good deal of coaxing along until she realized that there were marks on the trees that she could follow, then we could hardly keep up with her. Un grand MERCI à Marie-Claude pour l'invitation.

Is this the start of something?

Could this be the first glimmer of adolescence? at seven?

Toronto

We had a very nice visit in Toronto with a very lively Natashia and her two rather sleepy parents. Lily was very keen to look after her little cousin.

another activist in the makeing

Lily has finally figured out what she wants to do with her life. Quite simple, she wants to save the planet!! Here she is with Émilie who is one of the members of the 1B anti-pollution comity that Lily has put together. The comity does quite a number of activities, on this occasion it was a public education campaign. Too bad that there are not yet very many passers-by our front door.

patinage dans le vieux port

Another lovely day of skating in the old port with Meo and Marie-Claude.

Lily's (real) birthday party

After several partial nods in the right direction - some customized meals on December 26, a basket of cup-cakes shared in her school class, and a 3-way birthday supper - this was Lily's real, dedicated birthday party with eight of her best friends at home, complete with a Rachel-designed treasure hunt, a splendid incarnation of mommy's famous moca-swirl pound cake, and the usual jelloes, chips, dips, gifts, etc.

It all culminated in the backyard with some serious snowfun - without the birthday girl, though, who preferred to stay inside with two of her less physically-oriented friends :-)

Fête de Lily, Flor et Paul-Antoine

Quelle belle assemblée de famille nous avons réunie en l'honneur des anniversaires de Lily (26 décembre), Flor (13 janvier) et Paul-Antoine (31 janvier)! Tout le monde était de bonne humeur, en santé et, ma foi, de fort belle allure.

Un après-midi au Parc Lafontaine

Malgré une glace passablement malmenée par le doux temps récent, nous avons eu beaucoup de plaisir à patiner au Parc Lafontaine avec Marie-Claude...
... qui a fait du patinage artistique pendant toute sa jeunesse et qui conserve encore d'impressionnantes pirouettes et arabesques à montrer aux petites...
... et aux grandes !

Ski on a Wednesday afternoon?

I know, it sounds awfully privileged to be able to go off skiing in the middle of the afternoon on a sunny weekday in the middle of February, but after her most intense professional year of her life, don't you think Rachel deserves a little break?

What about me, you ask? Well, I'm just the chauffeur and photographer... ;-)

Molly's visit

We were all thrilled to have Molly with us for two nights without her papa and one with. (We were very pleased to have her papa here too!) Most of the time was spent very hard at play in the girl's room but we did manage a splendid visit to the Biodome which is Montreal's version of the Vancouver aquarium. The photographer was most taken with three little two legged creatures that seemed to follow her through all the ecosystems!

MEC on the runways of Montréal!

From the fashion center of the country MEC is very well represented!!

Lily McPhee

Rachel et moi avons regardé hier soir le film Nanny McPhee avec les petites et ce fut une bien agréable soirée, avec du bon popcorn maison fait par Rachel, miam ! Si vous avez vu ce film, vous savez que la nourrisse est une sorcière qui utilise ses pouvoirs magiques pour dompter une famille de frères et soeurs insupportables. Et quand ils apprennent une de ses leçons de bonne conduite, une partie de son hideux visage devient beau... ainsi disparaissent progressivement les verrues, la dent qui dépasse, le gros nez poilu, etc.

Dans le cas de notre propre petite sorcière locale, nous devons être passablement bien élevés car il ne lui reste qu'une seule dent croche à perdre pour redevenir normale ! (haha)

P.S. Gros merci à Alejandro qui nous a fait découvrir ce film en plus de nous en procurer une copie sur DVD !

Our first Fun Run (ever) !

What a wonderful experience this was ! Having registered Alice (#1787) and Lily (#1700) in the 1 Km race of the Thanksgiving weekend in Ottawa - a thousand thanks to Janet for masterminding the whole thing from start to finish! - we were soooo happy to see their little legs run the whole distance without tiring or protesting. Considering that the bulk of their daily physical exercise consists in two 10-minute leasurely walks to school and back, we had no idea what it would be like for them to actually run one kilometer non-stop...

Rowan, Teagan and Griffin also ran in various races that weekend, and all did very well - as expected !

Can't wait till the next race !

Fête d'Alice (5 ans)

Après je ne sais plus combien de célébrations petites et grandes pour son 5e anniversaire, voici une autre fête d'Alice, version "petites amies". Réunies chez nous un beau dimanche après-midi pour du costumage, du bricolage et du grignotage, elles se sont toutes bien amusées. Lily était bien sûr de la partie, avec son amie Juliette.

Le tout fut brillamment orchestré et mis en scène par maman Rachel, reliable as always. Le gâteau a fait une splendide impression sur tous les membres de la famille Taillefer-Harris... mais pas tant que ça sur les petites amies. Faut croire que le goût immodéré d'Alice pour le moca-swirl pound cake de sa mère excède la capacité d'absorption calorique des enfants de 5 ans en général... Tant mieux, il en est resté plus pour Flor, Gabriela, Éric, Rachel, Alice et Lily !!! ;-)

Fête de Rachel

Pour la deuxième fois en 11 ans de vie commune, Éric a fait un gâteau pour Rachel. Cette fois-ci pour son Xe anniversaire, l'autre fois c'était pour ses 30 ans. Un gâteau aux carottes façon Ottolenghi, plutôt réussi semblait-il... sans bien sûr égaler les délices stratosphériques du fameux moca-swirl pound cake de Rachel... (j'ai hâte à mon 51e ;-)