And We're Back!

A bit a of a delay in the blogs thanks to Christmas time and a lack of photos. However, today was the last day of Winterlude and absolutely gorgeous so we ventured out for a skate and to check out the sculptures. And eat the mandatory maple toffee and beaver tails (of course).

This is a sculpture that gets added to by visitors using water to fuse the coloured ice blocks to the main form. 

Here's where you use children to mine the coloured ice.

We stopped by the gallery with the big pieces from the competition. This year was much colder and kinder to the ice, so most of the sculptures were pretty much intact.

This one didn't place but it was Tom's and my favourite. 

Until we saw this. 

Time for a skate! Thanks to markers along the way we know that we managed to go 4.2 kilometers down the canal before we turned back for home. 

Not bad for the first time in 2 years. 

Side note for those in Oz: the route along the canal is also Tom's route to work. So he could potentially live out the Ottawan dream and skate to work in the winter. I'm a little jealous.

We also got a little extra excitement when three plows with police escorts came by to clean up the ice. 

Thanks to it being family day it was pretty packed for noon on a Monday. 

Unless everyone was actually playing hooky.

 Here's stuff I couldn't show until after Christmas, lest I reveal peoples presents. Though I'm missing one because I only thought of taking it's picture after I had wrapped it. Doh!

My angler fish with glowing outline, eye, lure and teeth. I'll have a photo of it in the dark soonish.

 A grouper and little glowing fish escaping from it. 

and Goldie.