Our maybe 80 year old boiler was getting replaced this week. It seemed more exciting while shopping for one. You may ask, "Scottie, why did you buy the 84% efficient boiler." Well 95% efficient tend to last half as long and eventually I'd like this boiler to be our cold weather backup to some sort of heat pump. We'll see. They couldn't get our vintage boiler out with all the snow and ice. We'd have a strange lawn ornament for a couple of weeks. Before painting the attic floors, I had to finish skim coating and then painting our bedroom closet.   Theo saw me sewing a button and wanted to learn too. We worked on buttons then I gave him this grid to practice stitches. He even said, "This is almost better than TV." He even made a pillow for his baby.  Our living room is usually a Magnatile city of sorts.  More like Picasso Tile and knockoff Brios. I think we even have some generic Duplos.  For the first time in forever I made Sunday breakfast. My favor...

  After waking up I asked the kids what they were going to do today. Meadow and Theo both agreed (I didn't even have to say anything!) the living room and their bedroom needed to be cleaned. Looks like my checklists have rubbed off on Meadow.  This is truly a miracle. Good job kiddos. It's going to be weird when the kids are older and we always have a clean living room.  They'll just have pigsties in their bedrooms. After the fish died we picked up a couple more for the kids. Meet Mario and Fishy.  I tried to talk Brooke into getting a cat, but she's right that we have all the fish stuff and no cat supplies anymore. Ah, well. So proud of these kids.  After 5 days of not having a gas stove we finally found someone that fixed it for us.  With all the boards back in place, I was just putting on the finishing touches before painting.  These tongue and groove pine floors were really meant to be subfloors, but sometimes, especially in upper floors, folks wou...

  My birthday celebrating wasn't over yet. After eating out at Sushi Train we came back for chocolate peanut butter cake.  What, no pics? I spent the whole day baking this. I messed up a few times, but it looks pretty presentable.    I guess we were busy stuffing our faces.    Can you spot the hidden 38? It wasn't so hidden, but then I decided that I should crumble some peanut butter cups and put them around the numbers. It did not look better, but dang did it taste good.   Happy Birthday, killer bee!

Another year around the sun means another birthday cabin trip. I originally thought going to Canada would be fun. We also looked at a few Hipcamps in Wisconsin and Minnesota. I was worried a few weeks ago with the warm up that we'd have to find somewhere north to find snow. Then we had the huge snowstorm. Long story short, we found ourselves heading back to Tettegouche Camp.  I spent a whole day looking for the perfect rustic AirBNB or Hipcamp, but then Brooke brought up Tettegouche Camp. I always forget about the long hikes or wood fired stoves.  When we got to Duluth we decided to try out the new Duluth location of Grand Marais' Hungry Hippie Tacos. As usual our eyes are bigger than our stomachs.  We shared a chimichanga and nachos, but should've went with there signature fry bread tacos. Daniel was really excited for us to play games on the VR headset.  So, that's what they did the rest of the night.   Meadow and I shared a bed. I just couldn't get over how b...

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.

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.