Winter flies by

I love winter sports.  I love that our kids are getting into them too.  Winters can get really long here, but winter sports make the winter months fly by.   I don't mean basketball, but cross country skiing, downhill skiing and snowboarding, ice skating, and sledding (if sledding is a sport).  

Clare, Karl, and Nora have been getting in a lot of cross country skiing this winter. 

Lena has too.  

Lena has also been snowshoeing the property's trails.  

Sometimes it's torture to finish the half mile trek, but there always seems to be enough energy left to do what SHE wants, like make castles with her snowshoe tracks.  

Or snow angels.

 A week ago we headed out to Lake Superior to see the ice.  The big lake never disappoints.  It's even beautiful buried in ice and snow.  

Last weekend we had an ice storm.  Our yard looked like an ice rink.  Karl even put on his ice skates to give our driveway a go (it didn't work).  

The following day it snowed atop the ice and was so beautiful.

 

We've had some new visitors recently.  Six turkey hens have been coming to our bird feeder daily.  The snow is so high that they can reach their beaks right into the feeder, knocking out seeds left and right.  So both the bird at the feeder and the birds on the ground get a good meal.  But they can clear out a day's worth of bird seed in less than 5 minutes so we've been chasing them away.  

We decided to get a Nugget couch.  We needed one more place for two people to sit together and read in the evenings and this play couch fit the bill.  It can be configured many different ways.  This was Nora's design.  

Pogo stick jumping is a big hit on our sidewalk, even during the ice storm.  Amazingly, no one slipped and got hurt.  Nora's jumped over 600 jumps at a time and can jump one-handed easily, even in snow gear.

I grew up with these omagel "blocks".  We'd had them put away for awhile and recently got them out on a cold weekend.  Here's Lena with her omagel restaurant.  We never got around to making "Lena's Restaurant" signs; she was too busy serving food.  I guess if you have enough customers, why advertise.  

Molly turned 14 recently.  She's mostly deaf, has trouble moving her hind legs at times and seems to be a bit senile, but she's still as good a dog as ever.  She can still get really excited about going for a walk, loves treats, likes to have her head and ears scratched, and sleeps a LOT.  Except in the morning when she seems rather confused with the whole state of things and walks around the house whining and aimless.  Clare baked her some homemade dog treats for her birthday.  ❤