The Fosters

Okay, it’s not our first winter (Ranette and I) but it’s our family’s first winter seeing as Josiah and Isaac were both born in Tanzania. So this weekend when we went to visit my parents up north in Bancroft, I thought it would be a good opportunity for the boys to participate in a typical Canadian childhood pastime - building a snow fort! Unfortunately my built in need to turn the simplest of activities into a major project took over and I thought, “Why should I settle for just a dumb snow fort when my children could learn all about traditional, northern, Canadian life?” Sooooo I set out to build my first igloo.

Being a researcher (of sorts), I decided to start with the bank of all human knowledge and went to the Internet. Lo and behold, there are expensive gadgets for building igloos but fortunately for me, some adventurous soul with a thrifty spirit blogged his whole igloo-building experience using only a 5-gallon pale.

Sadly, after 4 hours of shoveling and letting 104 snow blocks cure in the sun, the exercise ended in failure when the bottom row of blocks couldn’t support the weight of more than one row on top. The snow was just too loose and not sticky enough. A couple more degrees centigrade would have made all the difference. Nonetheless, here’s a few pics of the whole experience for your entertainment. Fortunately the last hour of the day was salvaged with some less complicated tobogganing!