Baking

It was Ellie's turn to do the baking today and she produced a purple themed blueberry cupcake,, complete with a blueberry jelly in the middle..................yummy, absolutely delicious!!  Glad I have had a couple of nice long bike rides,, means I can have two with a clean conscience!

Julie meantime has been on the marmalade production, this time a dark marmalade and a blood orange one is still in production!  Think we have about a years worth at present.......happy days.

The snowdrops are looking lovely in the garden, spring is here.

Courchevel 2017

Just home from Courchevel 2017.  Had a fantastic week, the fresh snow of the previous week had freshened up the pistes but they could do with plenty more.  The weather was fantastic with clear blue skies almost every day.

The kids had 4 afternoons training on the Stade Courchevel on the World Cup Race piste.  Two days of giant slalom and two days of slalom.  Thanks go to Gary and Gordon for a fantastic week of coaching.

Looking down the slalom course on the Stade

Ellie came home buzzing having skied her first couloir, the Grande Couloir under the cable car on Saulire, her father found it somewhat hard to watch! Lucky her mother was not around!

They traversed in just below the big rock at the top of this bottom photo and you can see them making their way down, ellie is almost at the bottom.

Above all the kids just had a load of fun.

Hockey and Skiing

Isobel was playing hockey for the school twice last week.  On Wednesday they were playing Hutchisons Academy from Glasgow in the semi-final of Scottish Schools Plate cometition.  They won 1-0 with Isobel being player of the match having kept a clean sheet despite constant pressure.

Unfortunately yesterdays matches at the national finals of the Scottish Schools Indoor Hockey Champs did not go so well.  They had four matches and lost all four, 2-0 and 3-0 were the results in the matches Isobel was keeping goal for.

Ellie meanwhile had ski training at Alford as yet another week goes by without enough snow.  Ironically it was sleeting and snowing at the dry slope during training leading to a lot of cold wet skiers.

Art

Ellie's still life painting from her art today.

Sunday 22nd January

Back to business as usual after the Xmas break.........well almost! Unfortunately there is pretty minimal snow up at the Lecht so snow training was cancelled and moved to the dry slope at Alford.  A frosty morning meant that the mat was running fast and the car park was lethal!

Meanwhile at home Julie was on Marmalade production, two batched, one normal, one whisky!  Happy days!  Looking forward to doing a little quality control at breakfast tomorrow.