Manitoba in March

It's still winter in Manitoba and this week we had a really bad snostorm.  Also in the news is that the Red River is flooding south of us and that the flood waters are heading our way.  Our house is probably not in danger but we are only about 400 meters from the river so it will be interesting!

I drove out to Winkler earlier this week and the fields are flooded with melted snow.  The river flooding is slowed down by the low temperatures that came with the storm so people have had a bit of a break as we wait to see how high the water will go.

The new snow is beautiful.

Here are the boys going off to school.  These days the sun rises before they leave for school so they don't have to walk in darkness like they did in December and January.

Conrad learned to curl on Saturday.  

He was invited by his friend Scott to come out and curl with him at St. Vital Curling Club.   Curling is a great Canadian winter sport and this was the first opportunity that Conrad had to try it.  The team won their first game and then lost the second.  Good Try! 

Arthur is still working on the basement and making good progress.  It's a lot of work but he's doing a great job!

Lao Motifs in our Winnipeg House

Some of the ancient buildings in Laos 

like temples and monuments 

are painted a deep red color 

and then stenciled with gold leaf.  

We always loved how that looked.

So we painted our sun room a color called

 "Louisiana Hot Sauce" and

stenciled a traditional Lao motif (pattern) onto it.

The flash makes it look orange in the photo but

in real life it looks red.

If you look carefully in the photo from Laos,

you can see the pattern we chose.  

It's the main pattern in the foundation. 

Homework Time at our House

Here is Arthur happily painting the walls in our new basement bathroom. The color is called "Louisiana Hot Sauce." We are all looking forward to having another bathroom. This house only has one and our last house had three, so it has been quite an adjustment for the four of us.

Winter is Still On Our Minds

The city is a mess and quite ugly these days as we are in the last few weeks of winter.  

When we are driving around, we look through smeared up windows because the streets are sometimes wet and we get splashed by other motorists.

Even the ice sculptures are looking sad as they start to melt.  This one is close to the corner of Portage Avenue and Main Street which is said to be the windiest part of the city.

 Here is something I wrote in a letter on March 11:  

It is so cold here I was sure my face was freezing yesterday. I touched it carefully making sure it wouldn't crack.   It was so windy that when I walked out of the Convention Center, I couldn't breathe at all for about 10 seconds!  I was wearing a toque (wool hat) but had to put my hands over my ears because the wind was freezing my ears.  I was only outside for about 10 min because my bus came right away... but I was really happy to get on it. 

This morning they were saying with the windchill today it would be like minus 42!  

All things considered, winter isn't as bad as I expected.  I actually had remembered it as really, really unbearable -- like crying every night and deep senses of dread when going outdoors and I haven't really had that.  It's more like one day at a time.  

Sometimes it's sunny and cold.

Sometimes beautiful and cold.

Other times it is just COLD!