Robomower on Display

Seen on display in the lobby at Toro. Looks to be an autonomous mower.

 

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.

 

Hard Water Season

Finally!! It has been cold enough that the lake is solid enough to play on. S loves it; he can run free.

 

Ski School

We took the boys to Theodore Wirth park for a cross country ski lesson. It snowed hard the whole time we were there and it was absolutely magical. The boys did well and had a fun time.

 

Snowballed

CP got out the snowblower to clean up the driveway. When he pulled the lever to make it throw snow, there was nothing. We discovered that the cable was pinched. When he pulled the lever again, it went. I was standing right next to it and caught all the snow that was in it.

 

Christmas in IL

We went to IL to Nana for Christmas. A hearty breakfast at the cafe got us ready for some landscaping work.

The same windstorm we had in MN also took out half of the pear tree.

 

Santa

We hit the fancy mall for lunch @ Cov and some x-mas shopping.

JP was fired up to talk to Santa.

 

December Windstorm

We had a crazy storm/hurricane blow through. This is the weather site we used to pull up in NE to check on the likelihood of tornadoes. I've never This is typical for August, not mid-December. Especially for Minnesota!

Lincoln had some wind gusts over 100 mph. Here it was quiet all day and then the wind howled for five minutes and it was over. All the neighborhood trees survived it, but one of out pots did not. The airport recorded some 75 mph winds, and there were several tornadoes in the southeast corner of the state.

JP had a spare pot and was able to stuff all the greenery into it and it looks nice again.

 

GP Junior Year

Since GP is at school, we don't get many good photos of him. This is his frat photo for this year. Sharp looking kid, if I do say so myself.

 

Ski Weather

 JP has been itching to try out her new cross country skis since we got them two months ago. Friday night at 9 PM during the storm, she couldn't take it any longer. At this point we had 8" of fresh snow on the deck.

Saturday & Sunday delivered perfect post-storm weather: sunny, 30°, and zero wind. We hoofed it down to the lake and tried it out in the daylight. Super fun!!! We barely know what we're doing, but we're able to stay in the grooves and slowly make our way down the path. The bike path is plowed by the park dept. and the walking path is now the XC ski path. We ran into some other skiers and everyone was enjoying themselves.

Snow!

Friday, we had our first real snowstorm of the year. We have been enjoying the mild weather, but everyone has been itching for some snow. Especially JP; she wants to put her new skis to work.

S LOVES the snow. He whines at the door to go out. He's content just sitting outside watching it come down.

It snowed all day until midnight. We ended up with just under a foot. St. Paul got 21". The roads were a mess, but by Saturday afternoon, everything had been plowed and back to normal.

Nothing is prettier than a the morning after a big snow that has stuck to everything.

 

Whirlyball!

What sort of activity can you do in the Twin Cities when it's dark & cold outside? Whirlyball! It's 5 vs. 5 in bumper cars as each time tries to hit a small target with a wiffle ball, using jai alai scoops to fling the ball. Very fun!!

 

Excelsior Cristkindlemarket

We ventured out to Excelsior (15 min west of us @ Lake Minnetonka) for their Cristkindlemarket Christmas festival. They had 20+ tents setup at the lakefront park selling all sorts of Christmas goodies. We got to meet Minnesota Krampus (!!!). 

After the market, we explored downtown Excelsior. They have a ton of fun shops.

 

X-Mas Tree

One of the fun things about the neighborhood is that we have a boyscout Christmas tree lot a few blocks down (the hill). CP came with us to pick out this year's tree. What seemed like a short walk there was a lot longer on the way home carrying the tree uphill the entire way. I'm glad CP was with us to help out.

 

Interstate SP

The Gs came up for a beautiful fall weekend. We went up to Interstate State Park (MN side) and then came back down the river for some shopping and lunch in Stillwater.

No trip is complete without a stroll along the lake. The nice thing about this time of year is that the sun comes up late enough that a sunrise walk is easy to hit.

 

Ice Pucks

The lake froze a little bit then we had a windy day that broke it up into dinner plate pieces. Then it snowed a little and refroze after that, leaving ice pucks embedded in the new ice.

 

Thanksgiving 2021

JP has worked out that making a turkey roulade makes a whole lot more sense than an entire turkey. It's big enough for two four-person meals. No bones, no grease, no endless leftovers.

GP came home for Thanksgiving and we had a blast. 

 

Reindeer @ Bachman's

We have two incredible garden centers near us. We stopped in to check out the holiday décor and found out they had reindeer out back. JP was loving them.