Today we slept in - until 7:20am as the bus for Mt Norquay leaves Banff later than the other mountain buses. Breakfast is cereal, toast and make your own waffles. The kids had fun with this. After doing the bus fight, we eventually got on our way up the mountain. Just as we left town a group of caribou were wandering around which was exciting to see. Mt Norquay is only a 10 minute bus ride which is good. The kids had group lessons today which allowed them to build on the skills from yesterday. While they did this Penny and I had a few runs together. It has been a long time since we could do this. It was nice to ride down with her to the sounds of explosions in the background. No this was not the fireworks of our love shooting into the sky, it was the Ski Patrol doing avalanche control up high on the mountain. You could see the explosions followed by the mini avalanches. Something I have not experienced on any mountain before. It was really cool as I often think this would be a cool job. While doing some solo runs as the girls had lessons I found myself a nice patch, but soon realised it was deep. Knee deep. After getting myself out of the deep powder I eventually made my way back to the girls.

Mum and dad caught a later bus up the mountain to see Emily and Matilda do some snowboarding. This was great as they got to see them sliding down the mountain. After some lunch we headed back to Banff for some afternoon shopping. We had to stop on the way down as there was a group of horned mountain sheep on the road, just another day in the mountains I guess.

As we wandered down the main street the mountains surrounding Banff we visible as the clouds had lifted which was very nice. After the customary latte for Penny and hot chocolate for kids we split to do a bit of shopping. The footpaths are getting cleared but still have the odd icy patch which Tilds managed to find - twice. Dinner and washing finished off the day and a skype back home with Penny's mum and dad. Home Alone was on TV so we watched this before kids went to sleep and the the LA Lakers took over. Lots of sport on TV which I am enjoying, Penny not so much.

2 days to Christmas and the town is really getting into the spirit with lights, carol singers and decorations. The kids are really liking the white Christmas.