Friends, Food, and Fun

'Why would anyone choose to go to Minnesota in the middle of winter?' my husband asked me. And, I have several good reasons to make the trip, but my top two reasons are for my girlfriends, Margaret and Melissa. Since we became friends when we lived in Phoenix, we've tried to get together to have some girl-time. It just so happens that Margaret moved to Wabasha, MN this past summer. I've never been to MN, and with Margaret's new work schedule, and when some other factors were considered, we decided to get together up in the frozen north this year. Maybe next time we'll end up somewhere tropical....

We all met in Minneapolis on Thursday. It was a toasty 20 degrees F when I landed at the airport :) Everything was covered in snow...I guess it's all pretty typical for February. We stayed downtown next to Nicollett Mall which put us in the heart of lots of restaurants and shopping.

On Friday afternoon, we headed down south to Margaret's home in Wabasha. We got there at dusk and got a little tour. Wabasha is a quaint little town with a population around 2500. They were having the Grumpy Old Men festival this weekend, which included a polar plunge! We didn't take part in the festivities but I heard on good authority - from the mayor's wife who lives next door to Margaret - that some of the men that made the plunge were in their 70s! Oh, and it was about 7 degrees outside as well. Anyway, Wabasha is also known for their Eagle Center which has about 90,000 visitors a year. So evidently, in the summer, Wabasha is considered a little tourist town. I thought it was a really sweet town. We met Nels and Everette and ate supper at a cool little pizza place that also had a bar and a chocolate shop.

Nels and Margaret have a beautiful view of bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River. You can even see an eagle's nest on the other side of the river in one of the larger trees. Seriously, I was extremely jealous of their view. I spent most of the first morning there just soaking in the scenery.

On Saturday, our big event was shopping at the local grocery store. We all decided to cook something - which is one of our favorite past times. We worked out, cooked and played with little Everette - he is so sweet!

It ended up snowing almost all day on Saturday! - but it only accumulated about 3 inches. On Sunday, we took advantage of the snow and went sledding in Nels' and Margaret's backyard. They have a very nice sledding hill, but Everette wasn't too excited about it. I don't get to sled much, so I thoroughly enjoyed it.

This is Nels showing us how it's done. Doesn't he have nice form?

Um....until he ended up heading for the tree...

Bristol didn't seem to mind the snow.

Thank you Daddy, Grandma, and Grandpa for taking care of the kids and house while I was gone. I'm truly blessed with such a great family and wonderful friends.

Happy Valentine's Day!

The kids were very excited about today because they both had parties at school. Not to mention, they got to hand out Valentine's cards and receive cards and treats in return!

I guess when I was little I really looked forward to the lollipops and cards too.

But now, we are inundated with sweets. Ah, well. V-Day wouldn't be complete without the cherry red lollipop.

I got to help out at Ian's party. They decorated cupcakes, made bead necklaces, and tissue papered hearts. It was very sweet.

And I got some beautiful pink tulips from Scott and the kids (sigh).

Happy Love Day everyone.

Ian's first soccer practice

Ian has decided he wants to play soccer. We were told that Plano Sports Authority has a great program set up, so we signed him up. He was suppose to have his first practice last Thursday, but we had snow still on the ground and it was only suppose to get up to 33 degrees on that day. Thus, Ian's first practice was postponed till this afternoon (which, by the way, was sunny and 68 degrees!)

I didn't know what to expect, but honestly, what can you do with a bunch of co-ed 3 year olds that haven't ever played soccer.

The first lesson - Do not use your hands.

Surprisingly, only one child seemed to really have a hard time with this one.

The next lesson - How to dribble. Ian did pretty well at this one, but he just needs to speed it up a bit.

Last lesson for the day - How to shoot. The method here was to just tell the kids to kick REALLY hard. Ian did pretty well on this one, but I think the smaller nets made him be a little more cautious.

Oh, and of course, they learned their team name and cheer......Soccer Dinos!

The big 35

Happy Birthday Scott!

I know it was almost a week ago, but we really did celebrate Scott's birthday on Feb. 7.

We couldn't go out on the actual night of his birthday because the kids have swim lessons. But, we did go get wings on the next night.

We even sang to him and Payton took pictures.

Happy Birthday, sweetie!

Is that still ice on the road?

Evidently, us Plano-ians are suppose to be comfortable driving and walking our kids to school on LOTS of patches of ice and snow.

Because that's exactly what we all did this morning. The roads are still FULL of ice. And here we all were, parents with our little darlings strapped in the back of our cars, driving, in my case, EXTREMELY carefully because we didn't want to slide into our nearest neighbors.

That's not water on the side of the road; that's ice.

I understand the frustration of NOT having school. Parents have to find child care or stay at home. The state mandates we have to have have 180 days of school a year. And I understand no one really wants to have make-up days. BUT, it was not very safe out there this morning. I saw several tires spinning because they had no traction.

My front walk.

I drove Payton to school this morning because I didn't want to have to navigate a quarter of a mile of icy sidewalks. It would have taken us at least 15 minutes to get to school when it normally takes us 5 - and it's 13 degrees outside, with a wind chill of 4!

So, why did Plano ISD not at least have a 2 hour delay? Is it because the roads and sidewalks wouldn't have been any better at 9:45 than 7:45am? I think it would have been a little better.

Road to Payton's school (and sidewalk).

But, maybe I'm just from south Texas and just haven't been seasoned enough for these inclemate weather conditions. Maybe, there were no accidents today due to the icy roads. Maybe there were no falls because of icy sidewalks. Maybe....

But was it worth risking that possibility?

Just another day in Dallas....

Today, Scott had to work. And because he had to leave the house early and drive in the snow/ice, he took our Nissan Murano. Therefore, I was stuck at home with the Corolla - which I did not want to drive this morning unless I HAD to.

I was determined to get out of the house. So we had a mandatory walk to the pond at Russel Creek Park. I was hoping it would be pleasant, but we didn't get 100 yards from the house when Ian began to pout. My eyes were bothering me because of the glare, so I asked him if it was bothering him too. He latched onto that excuse right away, so we trekked back home for sunglasses.

The sunglasses were all in the Murano.

This is where Mommy get resourceful and grabs the swimming goggles :) Please don't laugh too hard - I was desperate to get out from under my roof.

So, we continued on to see the pond and stopped at a couple of playgrounds along the way.

Sure, enough, the pond was frozen. There was once patch that wasn't that the ducks were huddled on. Then there were a couple of seagulls walking across the ice. It's not everyday you see a frozen pond in Texas.

About 4 o'clock I couldn't take it any longer. We piled in the car and went to WalMart. The roads were melted enough by then that I felt pretty safe. Tomorrow we have another chance of snow and this time they are saying there won't be any accumulation ;)

Just a little crazy.

So Thursday night, the weather forecast predicted a 40% chance of snow with accumulations of less than one inch.

We woke up Friday morning to 5 inches on the ground.

The weather forecast said the snow would end by noon, and it didn't stop till almost 4pm! By the end of it, we officially got 6.1 inches of the white stuff.

I don't know who is picking the forecast model, but he/she/they were terribly wrong in this instance! Good Lord.

At least the snow allowed us enough traction to walk around today.

That's Payton's school on the other side of the houses.

Here's an aside...There is a parking lot on the side of Payton's school. It's not very wide, but it's as long as a football field. Well, earlier in the week when that parking lot was just a sheet of ice, some kids decided to got butt-boarding across the lot. I'm not sure if butt-boarding is an actual past time because I just pulled the name out of the air. But, a guy was sitting on a board (of some type) while his buddies pulled him by a rope that was tied to the back of a truck. The two of them fishtailed across the parking lot - for fun!

When we had the snow, these same guys were out in the same parking lot, but this time they were snowboarding behind the truck....

The pond has disappeared.

It was nice to get out of the house. We sled down the driveway :) before Daddy shoveled it.  It's not much of a hill, but it's close to a warm fire and hot chocolate. (Pictures are still coming - we're having technical difficulties with our memory card.)