Signs of spring

which are apparently soon to be buried under a bunch of snow :(

Woodland School Winter Fest

Alex's school had winter fest today. There was sledding, skating, ice bowling, touch football, snowshoe hikes plus food and a few games indoors too. Perfect weather, very little wind and mild temperatures. The kids were so tired by the time we came home.

Saturday

Saturday morning the kids spent all morning in the pool at the motel. They went back and forth from the pool to the hot tub tossing a ball back and forth and splashing around.

After lunch we went in search of a good place for Matt to take us kite skiing. Unfortunately by the time we got down to the lake and got the stuff out the wind died down! Ben and Matt got the kite up once but it didn't stay up very long.

Luckily the place we ended up had a killer tubing hill! So we went tubing instead. All afternoon! They had a pretty fancy tow rope that Alex thought was the coolest thing he'd ever seen. (We were at the Al Quaal recreation area in Ishpeming)

After supper mom and dad took the kids to the motel for bed and Ben and I got a chance to go out with Matt and Amy. They wanted to take us to Blackrocks brewery, a new very small brewery in Marquette. It's in a renovated old house, very small, very small batches of beer so by Saturday night there weren't a lot of choices but what we had was good!

More like it

Matt works on the 3rd floor of a building right on the first leg of the race course so we got to get in out of the cold and hang out with a birds eye view until the race start at 7pm. Just before start time we went back down to street level to see some of the teams go by. Alex LOVED that part and seemed oblivious to the cold. If you look closely at that sled going by I am pretty sure there is an extra dog riding in the sled. The musher we talked to said they do that sometimes.

The picture at the top is what you get when you take a 3 year old, get her up early and spend half the day in the car and the other half the day outside in a freezing wind and then keep her up past their bedtime!

UP 200

Friday morning we got up and packed up and headed north to Marquette. This weekend was the UP 200 Dog sled race.

Windy, windy drive. The last stretch from just east of Munising to Marquette was crazy windy, the truck was blowing all over the road and I kept thinking how glad I was that the roads were dry.

Once we got settled in to our motel I took the kids over the the motel that was serving as race headquarters so they could get to see some of the dogs before the race and maybe talk to a musher. Alex found a musher that would answer some questions for him and we looked at 3 dog teams. She had done the midnight run (shorter race) 4 times and this was her first year doing the 200 mile run. She said her dogs were having a really hard time with the wind.

After dinner we all (mom, dad, Matt, Amy, Grandma Ruth, Ben, myself and the kids) all went downtown to the race start to see the teams preparing. The wind gusts were so strong that Maya almost got blown over a few times and Ben just ended up carrying her most of the time we were in more open areas.

The dogs were clearly cold - many of the mushers ended up putting them back in their kennels after feeding them. Some of the ones that were out were hiding under trailers or trucks trying to get out of the wind.

I had a hard time getting pictures of some of the dogs that aren't blurry. Not because the dogs weren't still or my camera setting but because of the wind! The teams that were right at the end in the more open area had some beautiful dogs but I was getting blown over trying to take pictures!

Reduce, reuse, recycle...

When I was at Alex's classroom for the holiday party some parents had donated a bunch of new crayons and his teachers were going to throw away most of their old ones - most were broken and nubby. I asked to take them home instead and came home with a gallon size ziplock bag over half full!

A cold snowy day in January with nothing to do the kids spent some time ripping the paper off and we set them aside.

The impending class Valentine party offered a perfect occasion to finish the process and make some fun new crayons to pass out with Valentine cards. I have been told that Crayola now makes a toy that melts and remolds crayons. We don't have that. We have some silicon baking molds I have picked up on clearance at Joann's and an old kitchen knife! I chop the crayons into smaller pieces and the kids load up the mold. Stick them in a 200 degree oven until they are melted, let them cool and then they pop right out of the molds.

It's done!

The sundress that is. Maya wore it the first day it was done, fresh off the needles she was so excited. So it hasn't been blocked at all yet and I could barely get her to stand still but here it is.

She is in love with the pockets. I think I need to do some reinforcing on them because at this rate she will have them pulled off in no time!

SUPER BOWL CHAMPS!!

Ben had some friendly banter going with the neighbors this week. This is the result.

Alex had a ski lesson today

Alex got my brother's old cross country skis at Christmas time. He dove right into skiing, spent a lot of time in my Grandma's yard at Christmas and has spent a lot of time in our yard and back field. We decided to schedule him a one on one lesson because neither Ben nor I really know how you are suppose to ski, we just pretend.

There were some big sprint races at Timber Ridge today so the teacher took him out a little before they started to stay out of the way. When they came back an hour later they had a surprise for me! In addition to the sprints there was a kids race with an adult in a dinosaur costume leading the way and all the kids chasing him. Alex asked if he could join in, so he did the race too and came back with a "trophy" cowbell!

Sledding party!

One of Alex's good friends from school had a sledding party for his birthday today! It was a great idea, everyone brought the whole family so parents got to meet and visit and all the kids had a great time. The weather was perfect too - upper 20's to low 30's after a week plus of single digits and low windchill factors.

Slumber party

Thursday night Maya went to bed in tears because she wanted to sleep with Alex. We knew it wouldn't last all night and would mean it would take extra time to fall asleep so I said they couldn't sleep together on a school night.

They are smart kids. Bedtime comes around Friday night and Alex asks right away - NOW can we have a sleepover together because tomorrow is Saturday and there is no school?

We tucked them into Maya's bed. Alex read Maya some stories and they turned out the light and turned on a little lamp. I turned on the monitor and sat downstairs listening to the whispering. It was very cute. After a while I went up and reminded them we had a sledding party the next day and they did actually need to sleep.

A little while later I hear footsteps out of the bed so I went back up and they were out of bed to turn the lamp off - ok, so I gave them the final warning. If I have to come up again then we'll have to do separate beds so everyone gets enough sleep.

For the next few minutes I hear whispering like crazy on the monitor with Alex saying "no Maya don't talk, if she has to come up again we'll get put in separate beds!"

Then quiet......

and when I went up to check the above picture is what I found.

It lasted until about 10:45 when I heard Maya crying and yelling at Alex. I went up to find Alex sitting upright in bed but NOT awake. Maya was yelling at him to pass her her water bottle. He was asleep so he was not passing the water bottle. Maya was really, really mad that "he won't give me my water bottle" and could not understand that although he was sitting up he was still asleep.

So I carried Alex to his bed and got Maya her water and settled her down.

Neither of them remember this whole episode this morning. They wanted to know why they were in separate beds.

Oh well, it was worth a shot!

Imbolc (or Candlemas or Groundhog day)

Yesterday we were gifted with a snow day! And it turned out to be quite nice for a snow day. Cold, but as long as we were out of the wind it was tolerable for playing.

We started some buckets in the morning to try and make ice lanterns ala Random-Charm. That was an adventure that extended into today. The first two we tried to dump too soon. The 3rd small bucket I emptied late last night and it looks pretty good, but we ran out of time to light it tonight (Ben is gone this evening and dinner time - bed time got a little frenzied). The bigger bucket I think could have worked but I was a little rough with it when I was trying to dump it out and the sides were a little thin so they broke down pretty low. We are still planning on lighting it tomorrow to see if the sides are high enough to look lantern-ish.

Alex and Maya played a ton of silly imaginary things inside throughout the day. They drew pictures. Alex made a placemat at school that he has been using at the table. He wanted to make Maya one and decided to make it out of small pieces of penguin shaped paper that he got a notepad of for Christmas.

We played outside and enjoyed the sun!

In the afternoon we baked braided "Brigit Bread" (recipe is from the book "Circle Round") and read some stories.

It was a very nice day, Maya didn't want Alex to go back to school today and at first he didn't really want to go either.