5C's Que Pasa

Somehow this shot got left out of yesterdays winter wonderland blog post. Just have to add it, cuz its my blog and I love this look.  Who knows when I will ever be here again for the winter. Have to preserve the memories.

Monday we made our shortbread cookies. you guessed it, first time in 20 years. Colin is great at measuring out the flour, sugar, etc. I tend to send it all flying around the kitchen. He also does all the post baking clean up:)

I am the mixer.  However I am also 20 years older and have had to get Colin to help here and there to give me a break.

I then spread the dough out over a few pieces of wax paper.

Eventually they get rolled into a nice smooth roll.

Wrapped up and stored in the fridge for a few hours or a day or two. This amount made me 12 dozen cookies.  Usually I only get 6 -7 dozen so I think I should have made thicker rolls.  Oh well, they still taste great.

Slice and bake as you wish. Colin really wanted to document the procedure. I have left out at least a dozen photos that he took, perhaps he is making a record for down the road when I am no longer here.

Definitely yummy.

Tuesday afternoon vistas.

I just can’t believe how many new wonderful things that we are seeing this winter. These are the first ducks that we have seen in the water since November 29th.

Good for this guy.

We went for a drive yesterday afternoon to make a cookie delivery. Caught this sunset from the car as we were driving back.

Another beautiful vista to wake up to this morning, our version of a sunrise. It is cold enough that nothing is melting. Tonight we are going down to -18C / -0.4F ( with the wind chill ).  Looks like we will be having a white Christmas after all.

A few of the small deliveries that we were making here in the park.

Now this is normally true but I am rather content here at home for the first time ever. But I better be at the beach next winter!!

Do I really have to dress?

Interesting words…

It was simply delightful.

The lighter coloured bottom third is the frozen part of the lake. Despite the snow the lake kept thawing.

This is the first time he shovelled. He had to do it twice.

I would say that I spent the majority of yesterday simply watching the snow fall.

With great care as to where we placed our feet we went for a walk. Love how the snow had settled on these  decorations.

We could not figure out why this fellow was removing the snow from his roof. Perhaps it was sitting on top of his solar panels. But he did do his entire roof.

We learnt that one needs to do this in order to keep the wipers from freezing to the window or to the cavity below the top of the hood.

So pretty.

That’s real snow sitting on Frosty’s hat and brim.

Colin surprised me with this shot this morning. The outside spot lights were on so that we could watch the snow fall while inside.

We planned to be within one block of the start in the area of the city we chose to be in.

Sadly the parade was 70 minutes late but we waited. We had put this much effort into it so we just hung out eager for the parade.

Yeah, the parade started and then quickly sped past. Perhaps they were trying to make up time. Because of the speed we could only get a few photos of the floats.

Santa brought up the rear. Wow, that was a fast five minute parade. But we saw it:) Actually it was wonderful event put on by volunteers.

They then decided to go visit some of their neighbours to our left.

So majestic.

You can see here how the lake has been quickly thawing on Sunday. Flowing water on top, and a mix of ice and water below.

Great photo by Colin ( and special edit by moi )! Again you can see flowing water and then ice.

Our second set of Christmas cookies were created on Sunday but we were so very busy watching the minute by minute changes on the lake that we forgot to take photos. Suffice to say that the Orange Fruit cookies were very yummy.

We were astounded to see so many changes almost minute by minute. As the ice broke up it looked like pieces of sparkling art. Here at the shore the frozen parts were bunching up.

The outline of the shore kept changing. That middle part was half broken up ice but it also contained debris. We have no idea where all the logs came from but they have become trapped in this section of the lake.

This was much more that we could have expected to see this winter. Yes those are the TrumpeterSwans flying off.  I took this photo with my wee camera.  Friday with the eagles was special as was Saturday with the eagles and their toys and then there was this spectacular Sunday.

Far to our left, almost just out from the golf course beach, the eagles were eating “something”. At times there were six of them eating, all adults.

It was rather large and the carcass had been dragged from the left to mid photo. Zooming at max.

They had been eating for quite some time before we woke up.

Within a few hours there was nothing left on the ice, no bones and no blood. It was as if this feast had never happened.  We were unable to focus more clearly to see what it was but perhaps it was better not to know.

This appears to be a juvenile. It had a golf ball in its claw.

It would throw the golf ball and watch it roll away on the ice and then go and pick it up and throw it out again.

We were enthralled. It was actually playing throwing the ball in the air.

Meanwhile possibly the patriarch of the family calmly sat nearby observing the process.

And then there were two. They played with the ball back and forth. When they got too close to papa he flew off a bit, not wanting to be disturbed.

We lost sight of the second juvenile and then it came back and started to hop about.

Oh, it also had a golf ball, two kids on the ice with balls with papa watching in the background. Soon they left the first golf ball and flew off a bit with the second ball which they played with. This all went on for close to 30 minutes or more. We could not believe what we were seeing.

We observed a few eagles to our left. They did not have balls but were flying up and down and chasing each other. The three eagles on our right went to join their friends or family, leaving the balls behind. The balls eventually sunk into the lake as it thawed.

It was a totally astonishing morning.

I am like a wee kid. We have some serious snow coming down, starting in about 12 hours. I don’t mind snow and sun, just please keep the rain away.