More of the White Stuff

I've clearly got to come up with some other words for 'snow', since it does seem to be a recurring theme in this blog. Today was yet another snow day! The girls were already supposed to be home from school because all their teachers are on strike for the day (still not sure over what), but what was supposed to be a light snowfall turned into a pretty major snowfall (another 15-20 cm maybe? It's hard to judge) and so our outing to Courmayeur was postponed (as Toby observed, it would be quite nice to be able to see it when we visit it for the first time), and instead we had a walk into town for a hot chocolate in the morning, followed by some time digging out the quinzee (is it with an 'ee' or a 'y' ending? the web seems to disagree...). Chamonix really is a very sweet little town with a pedestrianized main street that's beautiful at the moment in the snow, lit up with lots of fairy lights.
There's talk of a x-country ski this afternoon, but at this rate I could see some more snow play in the backyard, followed by some baking, some reading, some game playing and, dare I say it, a movie... this IS a snow day after all.

 Fairies favour pain au chocolats it seems...

Face painting is becoming the new obsession

 Buying some school supplies

Good on the French posties! They deliver on bikes IN THE SNOW. And they're cheerful about it too.

 Isn't this a great effect on the photo? (Thank you Instagram.) It reminds me of those faded and discoloured photos my parents have from the mid-seventies... my childhood, basically. Don't get me started on the 'third child' whine about there being NO photos of me (versus about twenty thousand and fifty of my older sister and brother), but the few photos my parents do have of me do look a lot like this... We also had a lot of snow when I was a kid, or so it seemed. (For years my parents fobbed me off saying that all the pictures of me were taken as slides... until we finally had a slide show and there were none of me there either... Remember slides? How funny to think of them now in this digital age...)

 Using the ice axe

Round-up

I had actually started a blog entry about all the books I'm reading with the girls this year (one of the real perks of having all this time off is the luxury of doing a lot of reading with them), but it turned into such a huge and unwieldy entry (don't get me started on books, whatever you do...) that I've shelved it (boom, boom) and will instead give a few highlights from the past week.
We had our first proper x-country ski as a family yesterday - first 'proper' one because we managed to stay together the whole time. Zoe was a trooper, keeping up with her sisters. The highlights were stopping off to say hello to the donkeys and ponies beside the trail (rather cheekily we crossed the fence, and I was then worried that one particularly friendly and lonely donkey was going to follow us home...), and Toby towing the girls in a 'train' on the way back.

 Making friends

 'Can we have one, please?'

 'I love him'

 We had done face painting before we went out, so we did attract some odd looks with our 'fairies' on skis....

Indie, going hard

We also ordered in for the first time since getting to Chamonix! We ordered a pizza, and it was a huge success. Literally - huge. The sizes are petit, moyenne et 'géant', and when they say 'giant', they mean it. Here's a picture of the box it came in.

Continuing on my cafe theme, I think I had the perfect French cup of coffee the other day. It was a 'noisette', and it came with a complementary (gotta love something for nothing!) cinnamon chocolate. The perfect pairing.

Our latest obsession is making friendship bracelets, since Neil and Ellen just sent us a package from NYC (thanks again!), which included a kit with small foam looms and the thread to make them. It's just the perfect level for the girls because it requires some concentration but they can do it by themselves after I help them set it up.  They picked up their projects again as soon as they woke up this morning, and only very reluctantly put them down when it was time for school. 

 Showing off the kit. (What do you think of the 'soccer shorts and stripy tights' pairing? Very fashion forward I think.)

Big excitement (It's an Alex Toys kit, if anyone with children is interested - I can recommend it.)

So, tomorrow the girls' teachers (all of them, this time) are on strike again. The French sure loves them a good strike. And lots of them. I don't even know what they're striking about, but the result is that the girls are off school. Again. (So it goes two days off, one day on, two days off, two days on, two days off etc. )   

Still, lucky us, we have the luxury of taking the time off too, so we've decided to go try skiing in Courmayeur, just through the Mont Blanc tunnel in Italy, for the day with girls. Supposedly the food is much much better on the slopes there, and if I'm lucky and play my cards right, I might even get a little visit to an Italian grocery store to stock up on cheap essentials like good olive oil, parmesan, balsamic vinegar etc. Can't wait.

Buried in Snow

So last Friday night we had yet MORE snow. I'm not sure exactly how much fell, but judging by the amount on our table outside, and on our deck, I would have to say at least half a meter. Probably more. This meant that a lot of ski runs were closed over the w/e due to the high avalanche risk.

 Our deck - with the snow almost half-way up the windows!

Dude, where's my car?

It's a new thing for me, living in an avalanche zone. Montreal is wonderfully free from most threats of natural disasters (aside from some occasional, phenomenal ice storms) but here the risk of avalanche is very real, and taken very seriously.
So it seems our chalet is exactly on the line of the high-risk avalanche zone - in fact, according to Lesley, our bedroom is actually in the zone while the rest of the chalet is just on the other side of the line (so maybe we should change our sleeping place...). She asked a local expert just how real the threat is, and according to him, it would take some very big dumps of snow that then become very smooth (check), followed by some very big dumps of wet, heavy snow (check), and then for the weather conditions to stop the helicopters from going up and setting off the 'controlled' avalanches with their explosives. (The muffled but loud 'booms' of these charges is a constant backdrop to the ski season here it seems.) Hmmm...
The new snow did make skiing on Saturday for the kids in their clubs quite the challenge. As ever, only Les Houches was open, and so it was the usual chaos. And Zoe's little class got stranded on the mountain and had to get rescued by snowmobile! Poor things, they'd gone down a run to a teleski (a button lift, basically), but the snow conditions were so challenging that the kids couldn't get up it with falling down. And they couldn't ski down. So they were stranded, and from all accounts, the staff from Les Houches were completely unhelpful, wouldn't let an adult take a kid up with them on the lift, and refused to send in the snowcat until the pistes were completely closed, at close to 5pm. Their only suggestion was for the four-year-old kids to walk up, carrying their skis! Which they started to do. So Zoe didn't come down off the mountain until it was almost dark, in the rain, at 5.30pm. But bless Zoe, she came off the bubble car all smiles, telling me what fun she'd had on the snowmobile. It was a big adventure to her. She hadn't even noticed they'd been stuck. Her poor teacher was close to tears though, and has declared that they will never go skiing at Les Houches again.
In other news, I'm very excited because we've just booked a summer holiday in Corsica! 'La Corse' clearly occupies a very special place in the hearts of the French, because everyone tells us we must visit, and so we're whisking the kids out of school in the first week of June (what the heck) and we're going to drive to Corsica for a week in the sun on the beach. I've just booked a little chalet, with a great terrace overlooking the sea, and a lovely shared pool. Supposedly July and August are crazy busy and very hot, but June should be lovely. We're not doing a huge amount of travelling while we're here - basically because we're enjoying this very beautiful place in the Alps and want to make the most of it here - but I'm excited to explore Corsica a bit. It's an opportunity that's not going to come again very soon.

Fondue Date Night

Toby and I had our first Alpine fondue of the season on Thursday night - at a magical little chalet halfway up the mountain in Les Houches.
It was a pretty cool date-night, alpine-style, if I say so myself. We left the kids with a sitter, and drove up a very wind-y little road up the mountain to the base of a chair lift. Then we left the car, strapped on our head torches, grabbed our poles and headed across the piste and then up a little snowy path through the trees for about half-an-hour before finding the cozy little chalet, Les Vielles Luges, half-hidden in a little dell.
It was lit up with twinkling fairy lights, and we were met with a chilled glass of rose to enjoy outside under the stars, before going inside to a little table beside the wood-burning stove for a cheese fondue. The chalet was decorated with lots of old photos and ski memorabilia (it has family history dating back to 1479) and was just what an alpine chalet should look and feel like. And they've obviously got the hang of the cheese fondue in that time because it was FABULOUS. You could choose plain fondue or 'with cepes', and we went with the latter. They just add a few mushrooms, to 'perfume' the fondue - you're not supposed to scoop them up. It was accompanied by the usual platter of cured meats and pickles, and we started with a salad, and ended with a 'tarte aux myrtilles', a blueberry tart.
The couple running it host these nights a couple times a week, and had clearly put us at the 'romantic' table, because it was very cozy and private and separate from the big party that was whooping it up in the main room. (What a great place to have a birthday party!). I think we must have been a little disappointing as 'lovebirds' since we did lavish a lot of attention... on the fondue.
After a cheese fondue, which really does kind of sit in your stomach like a heavy cheese bowling ball (albeit a very tasty one), it was very nice to have a walk down the mountain in the moonlight to get back to the car.

Setting off

Aperatif under the stars

In our cozy nook

Ski memorabilia on the walls

Toby, posing as an Haut Savoyard

The infamous cheese fondue

Delish

A lotta cheese

tarte aux myrtilles

We'll be back...

Some Magical Things About Living in the Mountains

Deer walking through our backyard in the morning

Ponies and donkeys spotted from the x-country ski trail

Sun going down after a ski

The skiing continues to be fabulous (although rain and snow are in the forecast for the end of the week...).
I saw Anna skiing with her school this afternoon (as I was sneaking in a couple of hours at Brevant, still trying to improve). I saw her with her class from the chairlift, and she was going (deliberately!)  frontwards, turning 180, going backwards, 180, frontwards, 180 etc. It was amazing to see, and it's always fun to see part of the girls' life that's separate from us.
We went skiing as a family on Sunday for the first time - and even Zoe is now at a level where she can ski the blue runs with us down to the chairlift. She does tire first, not surprisingly, so Zoe and I continued our 'hot chocolate' tour of the local ski hills.

 Hot chocolate at Planards

 Hot chocolate at Brevant

Hot chocolate buddies

I continued my enjoyment of the 'cruisey blues' at Brevant today. It was perhaps the most beautiful day I've seen for skiing in Chamonix - cold, but with deep blue skies, blinding snow and brilliant sunshine. It's hard to do its beauty justice.

Galette des Rois

Coming back from skiing the other day, and buying my lunchtime baguette in the bakery (I felt very French, walking home with my skis under one arm and my baguette under the other) I couldn't resist buying a 'couronne' for the girls' 'gouter' after school. In January, in France, there is the tradition of the Galette des Rois, a cake with a small figure baked into it, and whoever gets the figure when the cake is cut, gets to wear the crown and choose their regal consort (at least, that's how I understand the tradition). I wasn't tempted by the actual Galette des Rois, but this 'couronne' was fabulous - like a very light lemony bread with crunchy sugar crystals on top. It came with a crown from the bakery and everything. I think we're going to have to buy a few more before the month is up. 

(I've also become rather more sophisticated in my baguette buying as well - I've been here long enough to distinguish the many types of baguette, and have my favourite. I like a 'baguette tradition', a slightly denser, chewier, shorter baguette than the 'baguette ordinaire'. Occasionally I'll be tempted by a 'baguette rustique', which is a little rougher and seedier than the others, and don't get me started on the flutes etc..)

 Zoe and the couronne

It didn't last long

In the meantime, the skiing continues apace. The girls have skied all week in glorious sunshine with their school, and today was MiniClub and another great day out. In fact, so keen were the girls that even after we returned from their afternoon skiing they stayed outside until it was pitch black, building their own ski piste in the back yard, and practicing going down on one ski (and backwards on one ski...). On Wednesday, I went them up the valley to Les Tours, and had a great time practicing my own skiing while they were in their lessons. Les Tours is my kind of skiing - big, wide pistes that aren't too steep or too crowded. It looked almost lunar with the snow-capped mountains. Amazing.

 Zoe, still standing (I just noticed the small child behind her...)

And when I came back, Toby surprised me with  a new pair of skate skis! (I'd been doing my skating lessons with my classic skis, and was definitely blaming them for my struggles up the hills. Now I have no more excuses.) Thursday Toby and I went skiing together so I could try them out. And there's really something magic when the sun finally hits the valley (around lunchtime these days...more on valley living another time). The skis were pretty fab too.

 New skis in action

 The Dru in the background

 Enjoying a ski together

 The sun arrives!

Winter wonderland