International Snow Sculpting Competition

All week on the news, we've been watching the progress of the snow sculpting teams at the international snow sculpting championship in Stillwater. The main event was yesterday, but we did the kite festival instead. Today everything was still going strong, but without the big party feel.

The coolest sculpture was this one of a north woods canoe scene, complete with a reflection.

There were a couple ice sculptures, too.

There were international teams from Canada, Turkey, and Ecuador.

 

Kite Festival

This weekend was the Lake Harriet Kite Festival. All of the art shanties are still on the ice, but now there are also kites in the air. All sorts of shapes and sizes, from little normal diamonds up to a 30 foot manta ray.

The ice queen was strolling about with her polar bear.

It's only a mile walk across the lake, but walking thru the snow makes it feel a lot further. There were streams of people coming from all sides of the lake - it was a great turnout.

 

Ice Feathers

I've never seen anything like this - great big ice feathers. Each is about an inch long and they grew in the footprints and depressions out on the lake. We had a day of 40° and then it got cold (-15°) for the next few days. 

 

Art Shanties

Now that winter has set in, there are more things to do on the weekends than we can keep up with. This weekend it's the Art Shanty Project on Lake Harriet over by the bandshell. We walked across the lake to get there and back, and it burned a lot more calories than we thought it would. S had a blast!

The ice is now 12" thick and it was a perfect sunny no-wind 9° day. 

 

SKOL!

We got back from Vegas on Saturday and tested negative for COVID Sunday morning so that we could go to the Vikings game with our MN neighbors.

We bought the tickets at the beginning of the season for the last game of the regular season against the Bears. JP & DK wore their Chicago colors and cheered for the bears.

We were in the upper deck, but being on the 50 yard line made for some spectacular seats.

 

Vegas!

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) came back for 2022. JP tagged along and spent the week with the Gs at their condo. We all went out the night we arrived and had some fun.

 

New Year's Brunch

JP Thought ahead and got us reservations at Tilia for New Year's Day brunch. The first thing served was a green "elixir" that tasted much better than it looked. GP was not impressed. Everything on the menu was over the top and not to his liking. The rest of us enjoyed it all.

 

End of 2021

New Year's Eve 2021 was pretty uneventful. Half the family took a nap at 10 pm.

Hopefully 2022 will get us back to normal.

 

Ice Globes

One of our favorite things about winter is ice globes. Fill up a big water balloon, freeze it 24 hours and it comes out hollow with about a 3" shell. Drill a hole in the top and drop in a votive candle and they last several weeks outside.