The Meltdown

This year, spring was a little later in arriving. In each of the past years that we have lived here, we have missed the "big melt" while we have been away for spring break... this year, we got to witness it. It was actually kind of fascinating, watching the piles and mountains of snow disappear - and they weren't slow about it! These huge piles of snow have basically created a huge layer of water over almost the entire town - there have been rather large rivers running down the sides of the roads and the kids have thoroughly enjoyed the mud that is everywhere.


Every year, the Kinsmen's Club hosts an Easter egg hunt at the park beside our house. This is the first year we have been in town for it, so we were happy to join in and we met up with quite a few of the kids friends too. It was great fun; they had the kids in different age groups and all of them had to find two hard-boiled eggs with numbers on them. Kids ages 6 and under had to find pink eggs in the playground, ages 7-9 had to find blue eggs a little bit into the forest and the 10 -12 year olds had to find white eggs, deeper into the forest... all in the snow. They gave the kids about 15 minutes to find their eggs then they called them all back and they drew a grand prize winning number for three of the eggs and all the kids got a chocolate bunny. It really was well done, and fun!

Anyway, a day or two later we went back to the park to look through the forest to play and find eggs that weren't found during the easter egg hunt (we found about 10!). It was astonishing to see how much snow had disappeared in those two days and to see the creeks that had cropped up... we also found something else in the forest, she had left a lot of "chocolate eggs" in the spirit of the easter egg hunt!

We didn't notice her until we heard her "huff"... we were pretty darn close at the time!!
You can see the moose behind us, an also how much the snow melted just two days after the easter egg hunt!

Later on, during that long weekend, we decided to take the new (to us) little quad out for a test ride and we had a lot of fun there too. We were up on a flat on top of a hill, that eventually goes down to the Beaton River. I rode the quad for a bit and let each of the kids have a turn riding it (with me on the back)... Maria did great, she rode a few laps very carefully and slowly. Then Allan hopped on and pegged the gas full tilt! He was good once things were explained a bit more, but boy oh boy, the kid likes speed!

Just before I let the "speed-demon" have a turn driving!

Meanwhile, just over a little hill from where we were riding, the kids found a stream that had formed from the snow run-off. It was a pretty fast moving stream and the kids (and us too!) had great fun floating things down the creek and watching it go over the waterfall at the edge of the field.

Maria and Allan found a bunch of bones from some large animal, I am thinking it was a moose, but there wasn't a head so I can't be certain. They had been there for a while but were still fascinating! We also found some animal tracks which I am thinking were probably lynx?

I have since been told that the bones were from more than one animal... the spine you see here hubby thinks it is a deer, whereas the leg and hip bones were BIG and likely from a moose.

Now, my front yard is completely free of snow, my backyard is almost free of snow (the places where it had been piled and where the sun doesn't shine yet are still snowy), I have raked the snow-mould off my lawn and I have my first flowers blooming. I love this time of year!

I am pretty sure this is a hyacinth, but it is tiny... only about 2 or 3 inches tall