Snow got dumped on us again. They originally predicted 28" but we only received 13".  Only...Minnesotans like to complain whether we get too little or too much. It was a big snowstorm over three days! The kids playground is starting to get buried.    Now there's not much of a fall from the monkey bars. Meadow was home from school all week due to the snowstorm. She was done with e-learning early on Friday so we headed to Woodlake Nature Center to go skiing. This place is perfect for us newbies. No trail pass is needed and it's only a 2 mile loop. On Saturday Theo and I did some drawing together. You need to start an art project to get Theo to draw or craft. Otherwise he's happy playing video games or building PicassoTile magnetic masterpieces. Now that the upstairs is clean, and before we start prepping the floors, I tackled my giant mending pile that's been accumulating since last summer. We were back on team stain and poly the pine floors upstairs. I tried a

We had so much fun at the cottage a few weeks ago for Scott's birthday that we planned another trip back for Theo's birthday. Theo also asked to go camping for his birthday. This was the best we could do.  He'd have to wait for Brooke's birthday for something akin to winter camping. We're not quite brave enough to try out true winter camping in a tent. I guess my Bundt bird feeder was a hit. My guess was that the squirrels ate it. We had hoped to come up to go snowmobiling and skiing but in the last week it warmed up a lot and rained.  We almost didn't bring our ice skates but thank goodness we did.  While it wasn't suitable for snowmobiling it was perfect for ice skating 50 or so feet from shore. We took a little walk in the morning to check out the ice conditions on the Lake. I'm really hoping someone fixes this place, but seeing as it hasn't been touched since the storm damage it's probably too late.  We had to check out how the ice was on the

My parents are here, that means gifts for the kids. The first surprise of the weekend. Excellent... I was planning on making dinkel soup  before our night out, but forgot to soak the spelt (yes, you can alternatively use farro). So we got fish from Macs Fish & Chips instead. The main reason my parents came this weekend was to go to Disney on Ice. However, we didn't tell Meadow (and Theo) why they were coming. After dinner we were like, Let's go somewhere. Let's go to a brewery. Meadow said no that she wanted to go to a playground instead. We agreed. After parking in the parking ramp we said we were going to an indoor playground. That's when Meadow noticed there were a lot of kids suddenly. We had to wait in line to scan our tickets and go to the metal detector. Meadow started to question why we had to do that. Once we got through and saw all the souvenirs Meadow figured out what we were actually doing. Meadow's already been to Disney on Ice twice! This was The

Chocolate heart pancakes for these Valentines.  I got half of my birthday present early in the week on my actual birthday. An ice skate bag. When the big part of my present arrived over the weekend, I was super excited.   His old skates were starting to come apart. Time for an upgrade.  We had a neighborhood gathering for appetizers and desserts. We had to bring our new favorite cookie of course: kitchen sink cookies.  I was busy hanging our fans in the attic after finishing painting earlier this week. I also had to sand and plane the top of this door so it could close.    Now that the walls have been perfected it was time to deep clean the attic before my parents arrive next weekend. Our next project is the floors but that will have to wait until after their visit.    Once these floors are refinished, this is going to look nice. Sometimes Meadow and Theo get along well.  We then ended the day by staying out late for our neighborhood party. Even the kids stayed up til 1am playing in