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

Who stole January?

Bit scary that it's been a month since the last blog - not quite sure where the month has gone really. Work has been a bit rubbish - I should be keeping a secret blog where I can be honest about some of the stuff I deal with on a daily basis but really can't - it can be frustrating sometimes!!!

Weather has been a bit mixed, we took the kids to the science museum one day when it was a bit nippy (see the temp reading below)
but other than the odd day its been a relatively mild Jan, it even went above freezing for a couple of days which is almost unheard of. It got to about a degree above freezing and we went skiing and there were people out in shorts and T-shirts. Here's Dan with a nice view of Minneapolis in the background.
And you can spot him in the center of the picture going up the tow rope in the freestyle area which he loves although he's not on the big rails and tubes yet. I did my first rail on the snowboard recently which I was pretty pleased about given how long it's taken me to get the hang of boarding. It made me feel like I'd still got some teenager inside me - the good kind, not the spotty kind.
We also had some surprise visitors, Zahava (my cousin from Israel) and Joey came to stay for a few days with their kids Ofia, Mya and Danielle. They've also been living in the states, Oregon to be precise, for 18 months and were on their move back to Israel but wanted to stop in Minneapolis for a few days which is where a lot of Joey's relatives are. We had a great time with them as their girls are 12, 8 and 2 so Dan was right in there with Ofia and Mya and Becky loved having Mya as an older girl friend and Danielle as a toddler she could look after. We also met up with Joey's relatives who were really hospitable and I found out that one of them works in the same building that I do! We took them for an obligatory lake walk (if you ever visit in the winter we'll take you for a walk on the lake) despite it being in the middle of a heatwave and their being about an inch of slush and water on the surface as you can see.



We've also been getting ready for Dan's party which is tomorrow - Dan and Becky helped to bake the cake.

One thing about the cold temperatures is that it created some icicles which Andy loves to crunch.
I also took this photo today (31st Jan) of our back garden. Guess how long it has been since it last snowed? It's actually nearly 5 weeks since we last had snow - which just shows how long it stays around.
Martin and Margaret have just arrived in time for Dan's birthday too which the kids are super excited about. So we took Martin for his lake walk today, its a little colder than this time last week with Zahava and Joey - same lake though. Dan was a mini ninja attacking the bullrushes.
And this is the river that runs into the lake
We're expecting some snow tomorrow for Dan's birthday, I do hope so....