They're on the ball

The kids started their football (real football that is) classes today after it was canceled last week due to light drizzle (OK so there was quite a lot of thunder but honestly, if it isn't raining it doesn't feel right to be kicking a ball about).

The kids 'did good'.

Dan scored a couple of goals which he was obviously extremely modest about.


And saved a couple too
Becky was also a bit of a star on the field, though she sometimes got a little distracted by the daisies

Summer Comes Early

!!!

Biketastic

I can still remember the very first day I rode a bike, it was in Cambridge at my uncle Trevor and aunt Sue's house and I zoomed down their driveway and was off. I'm probably the only person who remembers that. Times have obviously changed and so today when Becky rode her bike for the first time we can share it with other people and she'll be able to see herself in 30 or 40 year's time too. I saw an article that calculated how much storage space it would take to record everything that someone saw in their whole life and it wasn't an insane amount by today's standards. So who knows, one day you may be able to review everything that happened throughout your own life or access other people's too.

But for now I'll just be a proud dad who is delighted his daughter has ridden a bike for the first time - I think she was inspired by Ethan who we just watched on Bill's blog riding his bike, so thanks Ethan.

So this is Becky last weekend, the lake is still frozen and Becky is on stabilizers

And today the lake is pretty much thawed after the only March in record without snow (March is usually the snowiest month in Minnesota) and Becky is on Dan's old bike


Also made it to the zoo last weekend for an hour or so (the beauty of season tickets).

Spring springs

One moment you're knee deep in snow and expecting the cold to continue well into April and the next its 18C outside and you're in a T-shirt and it feels like summer. Unlike the first 2 years we've been here the winter ended early and abruptly. One the temperature popped its head above freezing it just stayed there so that by the second weekend in March the kids were barefoot by the lake and paddling around the edges of the frozen water or jumping onto the ice. This is just a week from when we got back from skiing and just 2 weeks after we had -20C.
Most of the snow in the front garden disappeared

A massive contrast from just a couple of weeks before when we still had plenty of snow, even if it was sunbathing weather Minnesota stylee.
I think Guy and Donna must have brought the good weather with them because it was unseasonably warm when they were here, not so warm that we couldn't still walk across the local lake however

We also got some ice-skating in for the first time in the season, we'd been so busy skiing that the ice-skating had kind of fallen by the wayside - but Dan was straight back into it.

And Becky found her feet too
You can see that we have plenty of snow to spare at this point, and icicles too
Fortunately Andy was able to eat all of the icicles off of the roof to stop them damaging it.
February is great for boot hockey too, the team from work headed out and we had a great time as usual and with miraculously no injuries this year either


However I did manage to lose my phone and security badge sledging, as well as break my camera and get a nasty bruise falling onto it on the ice. Amazingly someone found both and returned it the next day to Best Buy (as the phone was with my pass they knew where I worked). By then I'd been given a new bling phone (a Whiteberry) but it was good to know that people can still be honest.
We've been making good use of the season pass to our local ski hill

Martin and Margaret also visited in Feb and we took them on the obligatory lake walk and winter BBQ





February always starts well with Dan's birthday - Andy is a hard taskmaster though and makes him bake his own birthday cake - however there are perks to be had during the baking



As well as a cake to be eaten afterward.The dynamic scene on Dan's birthday
And I guarantee that the cake tasted better than the jellybeans - Andy found some 'Russion Roulette' style jelly beans where the same looking bean has two flavours, a nice one and nasty one. And by nasty we mean centipede, skunk, bogey, vomit and the like. So we had the kids play this for a while which was hysterical
When you have a bunch of 7 year old boys for a party playing 'sleeping lions' is always a hit - with the hosts at least

Up to Lutsen

Well rather a lot to catch up on - I'll get down to the serious business of writing very soon but here are a couple of images and videos to pass the time until I do