Ground Hog Festival

What a fantastic winter weekend. Friday afternoon we headed to a local conservation area, we snowshoed up a long but gradual hill with the kids in the sled. When we got to the top we turned around and sent the kids down the hill in the sled. They had a blast. We did this until Sarah and I got tired of going up the hill.

This weekend in Stirling was the annual Ground Hog Fest. Liam and I participated in the poker walk through the village (Emily was at home napping). We finished with a great hand, 5 - fours, but I'm not sure it was good enough to win. Once we had completed the poker walk we headed up to the mill pond to watch the pond hockey tournament taking place. The hockey and the setup were interesting. They had the pond divided into 5 rinks. Four games were taking place at once and I assume the finals were to be played on the fifth ice surface. More exciting than the hockey, for Liam, was watching them prepare the ice. The ice on the pond is probably the best outdoor ice I've ever seen. Now I know why. There were atv's plowing it off, a tractor with a rotating brush at the front smoothing out the surface and people going around with buckets of water and brooms filling in the cracks. It really was incredible to see so many people putting so much time into having a good ice surface. Kudos to all of the volunteers for making such a great ice surface.

Saturday night we all headed to the fish fry at one of the local churches for an incredible meal. Liam and I wrapped up the weekend by catching the toilet bowl races on Sunday afternoon. We had a great time and enjoyed being out in the fresh air.