Anita's Birthday

For the second time in my life I am skiing on my birthday. The first time was when I learned to ski while on exchange in Japan, in 1983 (Yes... I turned 17!) Today, somewhat older I went skiing with Sammy at Marmot Basin, Jasper, AB Canada. They say that it has been a terrible season here, ha ha, if this is what they call a terrible season then I don't know why they even open resorts in Australia.

We are missing you both Will and Alec. Sam and I wish you were here enjoying the snow with us. For dinner we went with our Aussie friends Nic and Tania, Genevieve and Alek Ryan ( a family on teacher exchange from Australia) to have a bbq in the bush at Sixth Bridge on the road to Maligne Lake.

Tania makes her very fist SmoreSammy cooking marshmallows The BBQ sausages... they were GOOD!

Sammy on Sixth Bridge
Sam and Genevieve prepare snowballs to pelt Alek (Genevieve's younger brother) with

Nic with Cindy Hamilton(Cindy is the Ryan's neighbour in StAlbert and is also skiing with them)

Earth Hour 2009

Tonight we marked Earth Hour by cooking on the BBQ and having a fireside picnic in the backyard. It was a lot of fun. By 10:00pm we decided to come indoors as we were getting a bit chilly in the snow!

Video of the final cheer comp for 2009

Will is in the stunt group front left, Sam is in the stunt group back right. You will see that Sam's group does not do all stunts. This is because she is a "alternate" and if 75% of the team does a stunt then it is scored as 100%. If they attempt it, but fail it is marked down. The scoring is very technical!

Sam holds the "V" in the cheer part of the routine, she then moves to the front row, central, then over to the right and then up top for the last part of the routine. Will is at the back left in the stunt routine and then lifting the girl on the top on the left hand side of the screen.

The screaming throughout the performance is the parents!

Final Cheerleading Competition!

Sam and co, waiting to hear the result

The Prize!

The kids competed in their final cheerleading competition last weekend. It was a two-day event, with each team performing twice and the result being the total from both days. Friday's performance was great but when we arrived on Saturday morning we found out that the two top teams were even on score and the Saturday performance would need to be perfect to beat the arch rival school. These two teams have been neck and neck all season, which meant that every time they took the floor it could go either way. A very healthy rivalry, mixed with respect, emerged. The wonderful thing was that when Vic won, the other team from D.S. McKenzie came over and hugged them all. Winners!

Lazy Blogger!

I am now officially a lazy blogger. These days I think about things to blog but don't get on to them! I'll add some pictures and write about them... OKAY!

Anita attended the edubloggers awards ceremony in Second Life. Here is her Avatar (Annilou Szumski) sitting front and centre in this picture. Sam helped Anita find a nice virtual outfit to wear. The TechnOT blog came second in its category.

Alec has been working on his PhD coursework and is over half way there! the best bit is that Univariate and Multivariate Statistics are both almost complete, done and dusted!

Michael Iwama, a very popular and likeable OT came to visit the University of Alberta. Michael created the Kawa model with Japanese OTs and spoke to us about its applicability across a range of cultures and areas of OT practice.

Every now and then it would snow... and then snow and then be cold (-38) and then be warm (+8) and then snow some more...The kids performed in several cheerleading competitions. In this one here they came first! It was help at West edmonton Mall on the covered Ice Rink!

Anita co-authored two chapters of a fieldwork book with her Deakin University colleagues. Writing a chapter was really great fun and Anita really hopes to do more of that!!! this is the model she developed with Helen Larkin.