BRR

This winter has been one of the coldest... EVER. We have reinvested in warm boots for the kids and hope that they last for next year as well. Warm feet are HAPPY feet!
On the coldest day of the year, my ONLINE school even closed- the governor shut all schools down. So we went out and tried a few science experiments in -45* and let babies nap. It was a great day.

We did have a few warmer days and this was how we spent them!

Three is Company...

It seems like lately... all of the kids want to be together and doing the same thing- At least Emi and Pete are playing together and Lainey needs to be in the middle of what they are doing. Emi and Peter have been spending a lot of time playing trains, magna-tiles, camping and exploring out in the snow together.

I have even started to save time by plunking all of the kid in the tub together. It doesn't last long but they have fun in there!!

My Snow-bunnies

We have been downhill skiing a number of times this year and have plans for more. Emi has been getting the hang of it and enjoys going- she has even been on the chairlift a few times but needs quite a lot of help getting down the hill.

Peter has really taken off this year though, he has spent a little bit of time on the magic carpet, which he can now do on his own and lots of time on the small chair lift and a few triumphant trips on the big and fast chair lift. The first time he rode the chair lift, he looked at us all and said "I didn't know it was going to be this fast!" and now it is dubbed the 'bullet-train lift'. It was pretty windy at the top and I asked him if he was cold and he told me that no, he wasn't cold, he was too excited to be cold!

He doesn't need any help on the bunny hill anymore (except getting on the lift), he can get off of the lift, make turns down the hill and get back in the lift line on his own. It has been really fun watching him learn to ski this year.

Science Museum

We headed out to the Science Museum for a morning when we were visiting Greg and Linka for Christmas. I knew that Peter was getting to the age that he would love it, and that Emi would probably like running around. That was a good guess.

 Peter is semi-interested in dinosaurs-- so he liked seeing the skeletons and knew what types about half of them were. He also liked seeing the different sizes that they were.

 Emelia like anything that made noise or that should could play with and the musical steps. I think she may have thought that WAS the museum...  And of course, she asked a lot of questions- what is it? Why is the light there? All sorts of things. There was also a tow for a barge on the roof that both kids like driving and pretending that they were driving to our house in Winona.

 At this point, I think they both enjoy the Children's museum a little more but this was a fun new place to explore with our museum pass! I would also like to try out the History Center up there, but I'm not sure if our pass includes it or not?

Christmas Lights-- Everywhere.

We saw the usual sets of lights- the Holiday Train (which was very very cold) and the Rotary Lights (which was nearly perfect weather). The nice thing about the Rotary lights is that you can pick which day you are going to go and try your best to find a warm-ish night.

 The kids loved  looking in Santa's house and seeing him in there and seeing the pen of reindeer outside. Peter especially liked this little line of penguins outside and they ducked under the ropes to join them.

Lainey's First Christmas

This wasn't Lainey's happiest day, she was working on a cold and some serious teeth; but we wanted to be sure to get a cute picture or two of her with the tree and the lights.Of course, Emi had to hop in for a picture and see what Lainey was doing with the lights.

Christmas Card

After quite a bit of thinking and planning I think we came up with the perfect Christmas card this year. We "waited" for the perfect snow-y day (meaning that we procrastinated and got lucky with a snowy day) and got a friend lined up and went to the lake path for some pictures. Of course, when we were done, all the kids wanted to do was play in the snow and on the swings!!