Saturday morning Lakeshore walk

In a (vain) effort to tire Jax out, we took him on a 2.5 hour walk to the Lakeshore this morning.

We went through the High Park Zoo on the way to the lake.  Jax met the local emus, who apparently don't mind the snow.  He kept trying to stick his nose through the cage to sniff the emu, and the emu kept trying to peck his nose - it was pretty funny.  Someone really needs to teach Canadians about how nasty emus are though - there was a little kid next to us and her Dad was encouraging her to feed the emu snow.  I wouldn't be putting my fingers anywhere near an emu!  (If Jax gets his nose pecked, that's his own problem.)

 Welcome to Sunnyside Beach - covered in about 10cm of snow.  There's ice all the way to the breakwater, so you'd have to be crazy to go swimming.

I'm not quite sure why but the snow on the beach was covered in little pieces of ice like this - maybe it has something to do with the salt melting the snow.  

Stephen and Jax on the edge of the lake.  Big ice floes everywhere!

 Careful Jax, the ice is slippery!

This is the swimming pool on the edge of the lakeshore - currently filled with snow.  That would be a pretty cold swim.

Some snow dinosaurs hanging around on the boardwalk.

Stephen decided that he and Jax should go on the swing again.  As you can see, Stephen has a great time on the swing, and Jax just closes his eyes and waits for it to be over.  

Found in the park...

Snow lady and snow dog.  Looks a bit like Jax, eh?

Snowmageddon was snowverrated

There was a pretty big snowstorm headed for us the other day - 20-30cm of snow was predicted, schools were closed, and everyone was going on about snowmageddon.  In the end it was a bit of an overreaction - I think we got around 12-15cm of snow on top of what was already there.  There's about 25-30cm accumulation total now, which makes going offroad with Jax a little more difficult than it otherwise would be.

Jax was pretty insistent that he wanted to go out and see the snow.  "I'm the cutest dog you'll ever see - just ignore the fluff where I tore my toy to shreds again... take me outside!"  Once outside, he proceeded to tear around like a puppy, sniffing and bounding over the snow.  He loves the snow.

White white everywhere.

Hmm... how are we going to open this gate?  

Inside the baseball diamond (Jax's private off-leash area) - pristine snow!  Not for long!

There's actually more snow than this here - the bottom layer is frozen solid and the top layer is what fell last night, so you stand on some snow and sink into the rest.

The Canadian geese don't seem to mind the snow.  I thought they were supposed to fly south for the winter, but there seem to be a lot of them around, honking wildly and flying around in V-formations.  

"My bag of food is bigger than I am!"  Guess who had to carry all 13kg of it back from the shops... my shoulder hurts.

We're doing pretty well at the moment - Stephen started his new job the other day, and he's enjoying it.  I'm finishing off the last few weeks of uni before looking for a job myself.  I received some good grades back for my assignments, so I'm on track for some good marks for this trimester.   We know a few more people now, so we have people to chat to and go out with, which is nice.  Jax is getting better at staying at home on his own, and we found a daycare centre that can look after him despite his aggression problems (separated exercise areas for the dogs), so that frees us up to go on holidays again - watch this space, we'll be going somewhere more fun soon :)