I believe some new pictures are in order! You may like to know, for instance, where my sister works on her PhD in Microbiology Madness! This is the area - her lab is actually behind us (to the left):

This was the last day that Leigh was able to wear so little to go outside. Now she wears various paraphernelia to reassure the various passers-by. I'm thinking of taking her out like this again, though - look how happy she was!!

Although in Andre's hands, such sticks are swords, be not mistaken: princess Leigh only wields magical wands.

As confirmed yet again at the parent-teacher meeting that Charlotte and Guy-Claude attended today, crazy-frantic-all-over-the-place-Andre is actually pretty much the perfect elementary school student. He has taken it upon himself to double the number of crafts that are required of him, as they slowly take up all the space in the appartment. Below is a mandatory presentation session for the family. That's a wolf he's showing, and there are two sheep also that he and I played with later on.

We've picked up on the Amia tradition of responding to "How big is Leigh" with raising arms to "SO BIG"!

As mentioned in a previous post, we tried our various legs at sledding - a dramatic experience:

We recently attended a toy parade - a big event for children all over Quebec:

The Polomat family arrives at the scene in style:

Cute kids all over the place - these three were particularly charming:

But no one rocks like we do! (please ignore the lady scolding you with her eyes - she knows not what she does)

One really cool thing they did in the beginning was pick up tons of used toys for poorer children, brought by watchers for this purpose:

And the parade:

These ladies were just crazy-energetic:









Brazilian music - the girl in the middle, Luana, is an awesome capoerista, and membership coordinator for the classes I take:







Leigh is victorious!!!

Moving right along, here are some pictures from the "Values Workshops" I've been helping Charlotte with. With her is Kathleen, with her son Angus. The two of them are always a huge help, and I get to see them quite often through various activities:

For the last one, on campus at Universite Laval, we had to rent a taxi to take the whole family and all the stuff:



Early set-up:



Regent was our guest artist, helping us to get in the South America mood - destination Chile!



The craft was papier mache. Below is the preparation of the (chilean) giraffe pinata, the group activity (where Guy-Claude was evidently sharing an excellent joke), and the ritualized giraffe-beating:











Ta-dah!