Snot, sliding, sledding and sore stuff. January 2020.

Dry January? Mo-nuary? Janu-ober - Whatever you promised your past self you would do in January, you can now settle back into normal life and completely forget it. No more sticking to soft drinks, growing a crap beard or wearing slippers to the supermarket, which is apparently a thing, in January, in minus 30, in the snow, in Winnipeg. That and wearing flipflops too. I don't get it, I mean its cold and wet and snowy - stick some proper shoes  on your feet you dicks.

January was as expected in our house. It came a little after December, just before February and brought with it some weather. About 31 days. A few weekends, nights and lots of winter activities - including our new favourite thing to do - digging the green stuff out of an 18 month old girls nose.

Hannah, really really has some good snot. It is bright green and loves to harden quickly so that it sticks like glue to her nostrils and makes her shriek when you finally get something in there to pull it out. She is a trooper though and in the last day or two she has realized the relation between the slippy wet stuff that creeps from her nasal passages and the hard bogeys that we later pull out of her facial cavities. She is now reliably wiping her nose on whatever she can  - most commonly my or Buffy's clothing and every now and then she actually asks for a tissue to use. She is learning so quickly.

Tome to wash my clothes in a minute

Nice

She also loves to help out as shown by these shots where she grabbed the broom and started t clear the snow!!!

We took a visit to our old friends at Wilderness Supply one Sunday afternoon and Hannah tested the Kayaks and chairs - along with Teddy...

She also got a couple of late Christmas presents from us and from friends in England - a new set of United pyjamas - which she loves and a cool foxy chair...

As I mentioned just a few short sentences ago, we have been filling our time between wiping Hannah's nose with lots of winter activities.

A couple of weeks ago we had a nice family get together at St Vital Park, where there is a superb sled run. The city have built a 3 storey wooden building with ramps that resemble miniature bobsled runs - complete with frozen ice and you are able to take your sled and throw yourself down them at breakneck speed - bouncing off the rock solid ice walls and gaining more and more speed until you reach the slow down area where there is a slight incline and finally into soft snow.

Me, Buffy and Susan all took delight in chucking ourselves down this crazy slope with Hannah  and she was screaming for more every time we reached the end.

Ready to go

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Buffy and myself also gave ourselves a late Christmas treat. As a combined present to each other we spent a night dog sledding, through the wilderness of Manitoba and out to a Glamping tent, where we spent the evening enjoying  a few drinks around a lovely campfire, complete with homemade venison pies baked by our hosts mother.

The dog sledding itself was superb - being pulled through the darkness of the woods, by a team of 7 dogs at about 20km an hour. We had time to meet all the dogs beforehand, helping to harness them up to the sled as well as getting slobbered on by our favourite dog - Terror.
Here's a few pics of us and the Huskies, before the ride...

 Then we headed out into the night, for our ride and to be taken out to the tent...

The tent was great - warm, comfortable and big - a really special way to spend a cold January evening in Manitoba.

Homemade Venison Pie - Yum!

It actually got so warm in the tent, we had to open the doors halfway during the night to let some heat out. Then the next morning - after a lovely warm breakfast, the dog team turned up again to give us a ride back to the start...

Later that same weekend, Pat and Erika had been nice enough to offer to babysit Hannah for us, so me and Buffy headed out again - This time for a big pizza dinner at the forks and the opportunity to get some ice skating in. Unfortunately, because of the river level being so high before winter set in, there is no river based ice skating trail this year, but the forks have done a really nice job of compensating for this by creating a few kilometers of trail around the park area by the river, complete with warming huts, so we donned our skates and spent a nice evening trying to kill ourselves on the slippy ice - we survived though and even had time to visit the cool little amusement arcade as well, to play some old arcade games and some pinball - it was a really good date night!!

The biggest part of the whole month though was being ill or being in pain. Not me, not Buffy, but all of us have felt it at some point or are feeling it now.

We have all had colds - Hannah being the worst as hers developed into an ear infection too, which meant that she was put on antibiotics for a week. Usually Hannah is a little crazy as the following video clip shows....

I was out with her walking through the skywalk in town. She wanted to one way and I knew we had to go the other way....- so she sat down, got on her hands and knees and pushed herself backwards....weird kid!! But hilarious... (She even remembers she wanted to go THE OTHER WAY right at the end of the video!)

However, for the last week she hasn't been herself. With a cough, a fever, and the ear infection she has been lethargic and very clingy.  I had to work away in Brandon for a night and when I checked in to see if everything was OK, I saw this on the webcam...

 Hannah was so sad and sore, that Buffy slept in her bedroom with her and looked after her. In fact she did this for a couple of days and when I looked in the mornings I saw some other sweet images...

Its so nice that Hannah loves Buffy so much and reaches out to her when she needs something. She IS  very capable little girl, but when she was ill, it was so sweet and comforting to see them cuddling up so much. I know it was very tiring for Buffy but I do love them both even more when they are like this.

Buffy also managed to make herself sick somehow while I was away with suspected food poisoning from a food delivery - so it makes it even more special to see them cuddling up like this. They must both have been so knackered.

Yesterday was my day with Hannah though 😀😀😀😀💔💔💔💔👺👱👱👀👀👀😁😁 as Buffy has a weekend choir get together - so me and Hannah had a little adventure - travelling into town on the bus and wandering around the skywalk. Hannah loved the fountain in Portage place, made lots of friends, visited the MTS centre where she loved the blue lighting and this was when she did the backwards crawl in the video I posted above.

She is back to her normal self now and is picking up new words to say all the time. I even taught her to howl at the moon yesterday! She is ace.

Anyway, its now 9am on a Sunday morning and its my turn to be ill. I have the sore throat that Buffy woke up with yesterday, so Ill be taking it easy today. I think we have passed all the illnesses between each other, so hopefully this is the last of it, because we have a big February coming up - Lots of things planned and a trip away which I will fill you in on next time!!