Liya’s Humanities class performs portions of a play adaptation of “To Kill a Mockingbird”. Liya plays two roles: the courthouse bailiff, and a more challenging part as a devil trying to sway one of the jurors. The class’ teacher covers the book most years, but this year’s class has some extra excitement to it — there’s news that the Harper Lee’s long-lost prequel to “To Kill a Mockingbird” will be published later this year.
Sabriya’s 1st grade class holds their annual Valentine’s party. As part of their math work on graphs, they create bar graphs with candy hearts. This makes everyone happy.
The girls were supposed to spend a day skiing with their school today, but the Pacific Northwest has very little snow this year, so the event is canceled. It’s not all bad, though — Bree’s class has a Pajama Day instead. Everyone brings a favorite stuffed animal, too.
Even though Bree’s sewing class is over for now, she’s still eager to take on new sewing projects. Our friend, Siri, agrees to come over and spend some time showing Bree how to make a skirt. They sketch a pattern, and then cut the fabric from whole cloth.
Gravity-defying wine? Or maybe just jello in a wine glass.
We celebrate Angela’s birthday in the morning, then pile into the car for the drive up to Whistler, BC. We’ll be spending the girls’ mid-winter break at the ski resort there. For the last four years, we’ve gone to a smaller place called Big White that’s also in BC but further east. Anya loves going there, mostly because a number of her friend’s families go there too. But this year, Jan and Angela finally decide they want a change, and so — over Anya’s strenuous objections — we go to Whistler instead.
While the American Northeast may be getting tons of snow this year, the Pacific Northwest has hardly gotten any. At Whistler/Blackcomb, they’re having the worst year they’ve ever had. Normally, February would be a peak time for the resort, but this year, the lower halves of both mountains is nearly bare. And while the mountaintops are covered, it’s been weeks since they had new snow; what snow they have is old and crusted with ice.
This makes it challenging for everyone, most of all Bree. Still, at 7 years old, she’s become pretty confident, and can happily tackle intermediate blue runs. This is the first year we can genuinely ski together as a family.
We have a fun day of skiing with our family friends, the Frazers, who are here for the week as well.
Jan and Bree at the top of Whistler’s Harmony chair, looking towards Blackcomb Mountain.
The girls like riding the Peak-to-Peak gondola between Whistler and Blackcomb. Somehow, we end up riding it at least once every day.
Some of the Peak-to-Peak gondola cars have a glass bottom, so you can look at the tops of giant trees from waaaaaay up in the air.
Liya on Whistler.
Group photo of girls from three families. From left: Sabriya, Ariella, Kaila, Anya, Liya, Sasha, and Katherine.
The Frazers and Miksovskys get together for a group dinner followed by a game of Charades. Highlight: Marc struggles mightily to work out a clue (“Cave Man”) being acted out by his daughter — but it turns out that this clue was one Marc himself had submitted.
Frazers and Miksovsky families at the top of Blackcomb’s 7th Heaven chairlift.
Parents ski day. None of the girls want to get out of the rental condo this morning, so Jan and Angela leave them and head out on their own. The snow may be terrible, but the weather is beautiful.
On the way back to Seattle, we stop in Vancouver’s Stanley Park for lunch, then make a short visit to the Vancouver Aquarium.
Jan receives his results for the Japanese language test he took this past December, and is pleasantly surprised that he somehow passed. He’s continuing to study Japanese, and is looking forward to using it during a short vacation we’ll take in Japan this summer on our way to Taiwan. The standardized Japanese test isn’t exactly a pleasant experience, but is a good, objective way to measure progress. He’s planning on taking the same level test again this coming December.
Siri and Bree finish sewing Bree’s skirt project. She loves it.