Bye Flat Jordan

 We took these pictures before mom put Flat Jordan in the envelope to send away.

Bye flat Jordan. We are sending you to China now. Have fun!

Us

This is us today. Aiden, Olivia and then Owen.

Flat Jordan plays with Olivia's toys

 Olivia got a Barbie camper for Christmas and we found Flat Jordan playing in it.

More About Where We Live

This is Max the Moose. He is our town mascot. We drove by him today but it was too cold to stop and take pictures.

This is a real moose. Lots of them live near us.

They like living near Dryden because there are so many trees and lakes here.

All those blue patches are lakes. There are hundreds of them.

The City of Dryden is centrally located in Northwestern Ontario, along the Trans Canada Highway (17). Dryden is near the centre of Canada, half-way between Thunder Bay, Ontario and Winnipeg, Manitoba.

It takes us 4.5 hours to drive to Winnipeg, Manitoba and 4.5 hours to drive in the other direction to Thunder Bay. It is a very long drive. When mom flew on an airplane to Toronto for her business trip we had to drive all the way to Thunder Bay to get to the closest airport.

There is a place called Kakabeka Falls on the way to Thunder Bay. We stopped there for a break and mom took these pictures. It was fall then so there was no snow and the leaves were all turning colours.

This is what our street looks like today...

Everything is covered in hoar frost. It doesn't always look like that but it does lots of times.

This is what hoar frost looks like up close. Mom took these pictures in our yard.

 This is the frost on our swing set ropes...

Flat Jordan Goes Sledding

This is Owen...

This is Aiden going fast...

Aiden has a sled that has a Canadian flag on it...

This is Olivia. She has a princess sled...

McDonalds and Church

This is Aiden with Flat Jordan...

 We took Flat Jordan to McDonalds for supper for a special treat. Then we went to church. We have church in the evening and it is at our school. Our school isn't church though. They just let us meet in the gym because we don't have a church building of our own yet.

Aiden likes to be silly.

Christmas Morning

 When we got up on Christmas morning Flat Jordan was sitting on the presents so we think he got to see Santa.

Christmas Eve

 It is Christmas Eve and so we showed Flat Jordan our tree that us kids decorated. Owen wore his Santa hat. Our grandma who lives in Ottawa made us all new jammies. They are very soft.

 We put milk and cookies out for Santa and carrots for the reindeer.

We let Flat Jordan sleep under the tree so he could watch for Santa.

Christmas Eve Church

We had church outside on Christmas Eve. It was fun. We took Flat Jordan to church with us.

This is Owen showing Flat Jordan the frost covered trees. It was cold outside.

Olivia took Flat Jordan to warm up with the other kids by the fire. But not too close.

Flat Jordan played in the snow.

It sounds weird to have church outside. Normally we have church inside the school gym but for Christmas Eve we had it outside just for something special. There were warm fires and hot chocolate to drink and we sang Christmas carols and our dad told the Christmas story. Then we went home.

Flat Jordan arrives...

Flat Jordan arrived at our home today- December 23, 2010.  We are very excited!

My mom is typing this but us kids are telling her what to say. None of us can type as fast as her yet. We wanted to send you these pictures for real but the store that prints pictures in our town is closed for the holidays and won't open until after we have to send you to the next place. So we are putting them on the computer. We hope you can see them. My mom says she will email a link to this page to your teacher and also will put it in a letter that we will write.

There are 5 people in our family.

Aiden is 8 and is the oldest kid. He is smart and funny and has Autism and ADHD. He is in grade 3 at New Prospect Elementary School. His teacher is named Mrs. Giberson and his helper is named Mrs. Storrey. His best friend is named Ben and he has the exact same birthday as Aiden- April 30. His most favourite thing is Lego and playing Nintendo DS. The computer underlined the word favourite in red and mom says that is because we spell that word differently in Canada than you do in the USA. That is weird. It isn't a spelling mistake though.

Owen is 7 and doesn't like being the middle kid. He wishes he was the oldest. He loves to play outside all year round. He is funny and some people think he might have ADHD too. He is in grade 2 at New Prospect Elementary School. His teacher is named Mrs. Douglas. His very best friend is named Hunter. He loves to play pretend being Star Wars guys and he loves to play Wii.

Olivia is 4. She is in junior kindergarten at New Prospect Elementary School which means she only goes to school for 2 days a week. Next year in kindergarten she will go all the same days as her brothers do. Her teacher is named Mrs. Markowski and her very best friend is named Sarah. She loves pink and Barbie and Princesses.

Mom is named Tara and she works at home as a virtual assistant on her computer. Dad is named Doug and his is a minister at Timbers Community Church.

My mom found your school on the internet and showed us a picture of Mrs. Nix. She looks nice. Is she? We didn't find any pictures of your class though. It says that you are a grade 2 class. Owen is in grade 2 and his class hosted Flat Reese from another school in October. It was fun. That is why we are excited that you came to our house.

This is what our school looked like during the snowstorm last week...

We live in a town called Dryden. It is a very small town in Northwestern Ontario, Canada. Dryden has about 8000 people living in it. This is our town website : http://www.dryden.ca/


This is what Wikipedia says about Dryden: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dryden,_Ontario

We looked up Longmont on the internet and read that you have 86 000 people in your town. That is a lot of people. Our town only has 3 stoplights... how many does yours have? Is there too many to count?

You can find an Ontario map here that actually has Dryden on it : http://www.canada-maps.org/ontario-map.htm .  Most Ontario maps don't have Dryden because it is too small. Ontario is a very big province.

Here are some facts about Ontario that we found on the internet ( http://in.ontariotravel.net/traveltips/factsAboutOntario.aspx )...

Population:
With a population of more than 12 million, Ontario is home to one in three Canadians. 

Size:
Ontario is Canada’s second-largest province, covering more than one million square kilometres (415,000 square miles)

*We wanted to find out how big your State is so we looked it up on the internet.  It said that Colorado is 104 100 Sq. miles. That means that you can fit about 4 Colorado's into 1 Ontario. It takes about 28 hours to drive from one side of Ontario to the other side. That is a very long time.

Land:
894,639 square kilometres (344,092 square miles)

Water:
177,398 square kilometres (68,490 square miles), including 250,000 lakes and about one-third of the world's fresh water.

Capital:
Toronto (pop; 4,000,000 app.), located on Lake Ontario, is Canada’s largest city. It is also the commercial, industrial and financial centre of Canada.

Time Zones:
Most of Ontario is in the Eastern Standard Time Zone. Some of Western/Northern Ontario is in the Central Time Zone.

Right now it is winter time here. It is very cold. On the day Flat Jordan arrived at our house it was -32 degrees Celsius... which is -27 degrees Fahrenheit. There is also a LOT of snow. We love the snow. We took a picture of Flat Jordan in the snow in our yard and on our swing set.

At our school we are not allowed to play on the play structures when there is snow and we hate that. In our province rules like that are decided in the biggest city- Toronto. But it is 21 hours South of us and they don't have snow for 6 months straight like we do. It is much warmer there.

Since we can't play on the play structures all winter long we are allowed to bring our sleds to school. We love to go sledding. We have to dress really warm though. We always wear our snow pants and warm coats and hats and mittens and big winter boots when we go outside.

This is what our yard looked like on the day Flat Jordan arrived.

We live in a duplex... that means that we share a wall with our neighbours. They have a Canadian flag in their part of the yard. They have 5 kids and they are homeschooled. We like them and play with them a lot. 

 This is our back yard. We have a trampoline to play on in the summertime but we have to take it down so the snow doesn't crush it in the winter. We also have a swingset that our neighbours gave us.

This is our van before our dad brushed all the snow off...