Island hoping...

Montreal is actually a small island in the Saint Laurent River and today Fanta Pants and I put our snow pants on and headed to the tiny island of Saint Helen's with the children for La Fête des neiges (festival of snows).

We were super lucky with the weather - although it was minus 6, there was no windchill and the sun was out (Fanta Pants even got sunburnt!!).  With appropriate clothing we were all toasty warm!  We had an amazing day enjoying the snow and getting lots of fresh air and vitamin D!  There were so many activities on offer and everything was so well organised.  There was even a warm room for feeding and changing babies in!  

We started with some maple syrup on snow - just like the name says, you pour maple syrup on snow and wait for it to harden.

Then you use a stick to roll the syrup up.  The sticks are the same ones doctors use when they ask you to open your mouth and say "ah".

As you can imagine this is a very sweet, gooey mess on a stick!

We like sweet stuff in our family but this was even too sweet for us and we couldn't finish it.

Street performers in the most amazing costumes were interacting with the crowds and as you can image many of the kids including Little Miss D were totally freaked out by the intense costumes!

The real highlight of the day was "tubing".  This was so much fun!!!  You really do race down the hill - it went much faster than I expected.  Fanta Pants and I tag teamed between Baby A and the big kids.

There are so many ways to play on snow!

Other activities on offer were ice skating, snow shoeing, ziplineling, horse drawn snow rides, ice fishing... There just wasn't enough time to do it all!

While the festival finishes this weekend, some of the activities will continue on the island until the end of winter and we will be back!  We're all super excited about going tubing again!

We picked up lots of tips on how to make the snow work for babies and more importantly make it fun for them.  There were sleds and sleighs of every variety on display and the little ones were loving it.  Amazingly the babies were even sleeping in the sleds.  The larger sleds even came in handy for carrying winter essentials such as ice skates!


We are definitely getting a sled but now we need to figure out if we should get a single or double.  Fanta Pants is very taken with the wooden ones.  The other option is a wagon that has removable skis so you can put tires on when the snow melts!  I'll update you on which way we decide to go!


xx