Long cold winter....

Well the winter is still grinding on and since last post there have been some eventful times. This winter we've had the most snowfall since 1971-72 so I've spent most of it shoveling. Hockey turns out to be my least favorite sport. I mean, I love playing and so does Darion (I think Adara wishes she had played soccer instead), but in terms of organization, it's a nightmare. With most sports there has been a regular weekly schedule, but with hockey it jumps all over the place. About 1/4 of the practices we found out about either the day before or the morning of....not easy when you're trying to schedule things in advance.

Costa Rica was a blast (see below) but otherwise this winter

Our cross country team won it's 5th consecutive city championship. Our midget boys were rock solid, just lacking that one or two guys that would be at the front of the pack at OFSAA. Nepean also had a strong team and we battled hard with them all year, beating them by 3 and 4 points at the Conference and City Champs respectively and then we placed 7th at OFSAA (325) with Nepean 8th (359).

We spent Christmas in Sudbury this year, visiting with Pam and Dave. That was followed by a trip to Dave's parents in Cobalt, where we had some wonderful skiing.

Darion had a very successful cub car rally this year. His car would have made the finals of the Baloo track, but was withdrawn because his car was being awarded the best original design award (they withdraw cars that win special awards to prevent doubling up and allow more boys to win awards)! That morning was followed by Adara's first youth activity day. She turned 12 in January and is now part of the Young Womens program! Luckily it was all at the Stake Centre, but there was hockey to run around to as well....hectic day.

Finally I coached our School SG Volleyball team again this year. We won the city title and qualified for OFSAA for a fifth consecutive year as well! We played very well at OFSAA winning all three matches on the first day and placing 1st in our pool. We only had one match, where we weren't near perfect, and unfortunately, that was our quarter-final match. We didn't play poorly, we just lost focus a bit and started worrying about the score as opposed to planning to win the next point. I heard an excellent quote this year from a former US beach and court player named Karch Karily, who when asked how he prepared to win Olympic gold replied, "I never did. I just prepared to win the next point." Sadly, the team that finished 2nd in our pool, Forest Heights, went on to win the bronze medal, so we feel we had it in us to do at least that well.