Words, Words, Words: March Came In Like a Lion …

I love that old saying that March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. While it is not always true, I can still picture the stormy “lion” and peaceful “lamb” I first visualized when I heard this as a child at school, and I think it is such a wonderful description of winter changing to spring.

While our February was relatively uneventful

(besides this rainbow on Feb. 1)

(and our heart-shaped pizzas on the 14th),

our March really did start out like a lion and finish off like a lamb—although not necessarily with the weather!

March started with Janae's birthday on the 5th. She and her friends went out for dinner right after vocal jazz, then came over for cake.

While Janae always chooses a DQ ice cream cake for her birthday, this year she wanted us to add an anime villain/Cinderella combo to the top.

Alaina and I managed to make it happen ...

but with that many candles so close to our "homemade lamination" (aka tape) project, we started to see some black smoke as we were walking to the living room singing "Happy Birthday."

Cinderella and her scary admirer were seconds away from going up in actual flames when Janae blew out her 17 candles!

A few days later, on March 14, Eric had an exciting event: the library reading challenge. Teams of Grade 5 students from our area read six novels and then competed at their individual schools, answering questions created by the community librarians. Being in Grade 4, Eric wanted to participate but had to get special permission to join a team. All of his friends dropped out, but Eric stayed on his team (the Purple Wildcats), and his group ended up winning his school competition.

The next step was a competition at another elementary school, where 14 or so teams answered questions for about two hours. It was intense!

While Eric's team didn't win, he loved the entire experience and was sad when it ended. Luckily he's only in Grade 4, so he'll get to do it all again next year :)

Then, on the 17th, we celebrated Jason's birthday. Actually, we did most of our celebrating on the 16th (we went to the Old Spaghetti Factory for dinner and then had a chocolate mousse cake with Anita, Summer and my mom), because Janae left for her school trip to Greece and Italy at 3 a.m. on the 17th!

We dropped Janae off at the school, then came home and tried to get a little sleep (I had to teach Sunday School a few hours later!).

That afternoon we went for a hike in the woods. It was a beautiful day, even though we were missing Janae.

Janae was obviously having some pretty amazing adventures of her own, though. She was not feeling well at all the first night in Rome and just wanted to come home. The military presence in the city made her feel unsafe, and she hated the food! But over the next few days she visited the Coliseum, Pompeii and the Vatican. Janae said the Vatican was her favorite because of all the amazing art and statues. She even bought a rosary from the gift shop, "in case she ever becomes Catholic" :).

Janae enjoyed Greece more than Italy, especially Olympia, which she described as very peaceful. She also really liked the Greek food! She got to run on the original Olympic track, see the Parthenon, and even swim in the Mediterranean Sea. Since Eric is slightly obsessed with Greek and Roman mythology, Janae collected some fun souvenirs along the way for him as well.

We picked Janae up from the Vancouver airport on March 25, and she was happy to be home :)

But what did we do while Janae was gone?

Ben had school and Jason was working, but Alaina and Eric were on spring break, and we had made plans to visit our niece/cousin Becca in Calgary!

I was a little nervous to travel while Janae was away--and without another adult--but we flew out and hoped for the best. A few days before we were supposed to leave, we saw that the weather was going to be very cold ... and snowy. This ended up causing our landing to be delayed because there was too much ice on the runway at the Calgary airport. The pilot said we might have to divert to Edmonton ... but after a few minutes of circling above the airport, he received word that we could land. It was kind of a scary, icy landing, but at least we were in Calgary and not Edmonton!

Luckily, Becca and her husband Brody met us at the airport, and Brody drove our rental car the 40 minutes to their neighborhood. It was late at night, so we just went in to meet their adorable lion of a kitten (Loki) and then headed to our rental suite.

This was another adventure. As I already mentioned, it was late at night, and when we arrived at the address, we didn't see a number panel by the door where we could enter the access code. I thought maybe I should try around the back of the house, but the stairs on the side were covered with snow. Still, what else could I do?

Around the back, there did not appear to be a number panel by the door, but there was a small dark screen—which I tapped. Nothing happened.

I went back to the car and tried calling and emailing the host but received no reply. Then I went up and rang the doorbell, but still no one answered. Thinking we might have to go back to Becca and Brody's (it was around midnight by this time!) or sleep in our tiny car, I went back down the snowy side stairs to try one more time. This time I pressed on the screen by the door, and after a few seconds, some numbers appeared. I typed in the code, and the door opened. The suite was warm and inviting—such a relief!

The next morning we got up and brushed at least four inches of snow off of our car. This would become our daily—and sometimes even hourly—routine. (Wasn't this supposed to be spring break?!)

The first day we spent time at Studio Bell, a national music museum, while we waited for Becca and Brody to get home from work.

We learned about Canadian artists and music in general and also got to try out some instruments/interactive displays.

Since we had a few more hours, we also drove down to High River, where we saw a small Heartland exhibit at the local museum.

Then we walked down the street to Maggie's Diner, which is often featured on the TV show, but unfortunately it was closed. But that didn't stop Eric from having fun with icicles--another big theme of our trip :)

We decided to drive out to the ranch where Heartland is filmed, but the weather started getting icier and snowier, so we didn't stop for a picture. In fact, we felt pretty lucky to make it back to Becca and Brody's without getting stuck or crashing our car!

That evening we had pizza with Becca and Brody, then played a few variations of UNO and Harry Potter Clue.

When we tried to leave, our car was stuck in the ice and snow. Luckily Brody knew how to get it out—one of the perks of growing up in Calgary, I’m sure :)

On the 3-minute drive to our suite, we saw some bunnies, which Becca later told us were jackrabbits.

We got to spend the whole next day (Friday) with Becca! First we went to see the temple—it was -10 degrees C, so we didn’t stay long, but it was really beautiful (and Eric found another giant icicle).

Next, we stopped for milkshakes at Peter’s—one of Brody’s favorites … but did I mention it was -10?!? We got to choose up to three different flavors to mix: Eric went for chocolate Oreo marshmallow, and Alaina had raspberry marshmallow. I didn't get one because it was so cold, but now I'm wishing I had! We'll have to visit another time in the summer :)

Our final destination this day was the Calgary Zoo. We’d heard Calgary had a great zoo, but it definitely exceeded our expectations. We saw baby gorillas playing (and getting separated by their mother when they got too rough), hippos getting fed, butterflies, snowy owls so camouflaged by actual snow that they were difficult to spot (can you see one in a picture below?), penguins in their natural habitat... it was really amazing.

Then Brody joined us for dinner at the Cheesecake Cafe. After that, more games—this time Mario Kart on the Nintendo Switch.

The next day we woke up to … yes, more snow. This made me nervous since we’d be driving back to the airport on a busier freeway. We left early and got to the airport in plenty of time ... then our plane was delayed by two hours, so we were there for quite a while.

But soon we were back to our beautiful, sunny and green British Columbia--and a few days later, Janae was home too.

We had only a little bit of spring break left, but it was just enough time to have some of Eric's friends over for Harry Potter treats (chocolate frogs and sorting cupcakes), some games and a movie,