Tuesday, 28 June 2011

NEWSFLASH!!!

HI! we are now at our apartment in Garneau! and we have a spa! YAY! 
Anyway, for about 1 week we where in the Rockies! in the rockies we had been to jasper and banff national parks (they are not one big park). Did you know that Edmonton is 700m above sea level, and Jasper is about 1000m?, and we had walked to the top of Whistler's Mountain at 2.3km (but only after the tramway took us up to the tree-line). 

And I had been in snow for the first time! me and dad had a snow fight and when dad threw a snow ball I had my glove on so I put out my hand so I could make the snowball explode. This happened a few more times and when he threw it at my face I put my hand out, when it exploded all of the snow from the snowball went all over my forehead! Then I got my revenge! when I hit him the snow went all down his back and on his neck and every where you don't want it to go! We also saw a snowfall! (lots of snow falling off a mountain from a glacier breaking up). It was so cool! It sounded like really loud thunder, and every fall of the ice had probably 2 tonnes of ice and snow!
Here are some cool images of animals we saw near Jasper. We found them grazing next to the road, but it was easiest to look for the piles of stopped cars and people with cameras!
 moose

  big horn sheep

Do you know how to tell how old a big horn sheep is without asking it? We will reveal all in a post later.
 colombian ground squirrel - Canada has a lot of these!

 'Empty window'

This is a photo I took of an old mining house halfway up a mountain. Mom (we're in Canada) had to bribe us with promise of McDonald's for dinner to get us to the top.  This is a cool spot for throwing rocks and making shapes made from the rocks. It is the Athabasca River.

bye for now and keep the comments coming. M

Friday, 17 June 2011

excursions

I have already had 2 excursions at school! One was to a nature reserve, where we did a big walk and saw lots of plants but no animals, except for tracks. We couldn't tell what animals they were, even the teachers.  Today I went to the Muttart Conservatory! There are 4 glass pyramids and underneath are different zones. One is the arid (dry) pyramid, one is the tropical pyramid, one is the temperate (figs were growing there) pyramid and the feature pyramid. You're possibly wondering what the feature pyramid is: it is a mixture of flowers and trees, the flowers are the ones you would find in people's gardens. There were a couple of interesting things: #1 I was allowed to take home a petunia in a pot! #2 there was a cactus that was called old man cactus because it had white hair all over it and there was so much hair you could not see the plant!!!

In answer to your questions, bison are about 1.5m tall and 2m long (my guess) and weigh 460-907 kg (according to Ask.com). They seem quite friendly and calm.
Hawaiian pizzas have been a disappointment! The last one I had was pretty average. It had too much bland cheese and not enough yummy pineapple. The one before was halal, so it had pretend bacon made from chicken. 
At school we don't have to wear uniforms! YAY!!!!! They call tiggy "tag", either way it is exactly the same. There are rabbits on the school grounds, they have long ears and long legs and are tame. 
Over here the mornings are freezing and the afternoons are hot. Sometimes the days are wet and cold. Overall it is a bit better than a Melbourne winter. Inside the houses it is boiling and sometimes just right.
 I found a cool coin with something missing on the coin on the right! see if you can find it!
I had a spa bath 2 nights ago and put shampoo in the bath and the jets made so many bubbles the bath almost overflowed with bubbles. Andrew thought it was scary, Elaine thought it was fun and a bit scary and I thought it was really fun.
and once again. thanks for all your comments!