Ice Fishing for Valentine's Day

On Valentine's Day, we rented an awesome ice fishing house for the day. When I called to ask about rentals, the guy on the phone asked me "Do you want to rent a house for the day? Or, do you want to spend the night?" WHAT???? I began laughing of course & said "What do you mean spend the night?" Apparently, they make ice fishing houses that look exactly like campers & you can rent them out like hotel rooms. How crazy is that! If we had had an overnight babysitter available I would have totally done it!

Here was our 'house' for the day...and our plowed driveway.

The only difference between a camper & a sleeper ice house is that...the ice house has no plumbing. So, here is the bathroom. Yes, that is just a trash can underneath the toilet seat!

Here is a shot of what the ice holes looked like. The ice was almost 3 feet thick.

Andi ice fishing, while Dawson is watching a movie from the top bunk. (Derek is totally making an Andi face in this picture)

Dawson attempting to pose outside the ice house...it was about -15 that day! His face says it all.

Andi skipping on the lake. I dressed her in Dawson's clothes because I wanted them both to look 'Minnesotan'. She didn't mind because she loves this hat anyway.

Telling a fish tale...'it was THIS big'

And, here is the ONLY catch of the day! Dawson was just a tad excited. Here is the crazy part: do you see how there are two lures hanging from the fish? Well, right after we started fishing, someone knocked on our door. Who would be knocking on our door in an ice fishing house???? I set my pole down on the floor, across the hole, thinking that it would NOT be able to fall in that way. WRONG! The door knocker turned out to be a college student doing surveys about ice fishing for a school project. While answering her questions, we heard all this ruckus, and looked just in time to see my fishing pole buck & then disappear into the fishing hole! We were totally bummed of course because we were adding up how much it would cost us to have to replace the pole. However, about an hour later....Dawson caught this fish & MY FISHING POLE! What are the odds of that???

After a couple of hours, we took the kids home to the babysitter & then we were able to enjoy the evening. We fished unsuccessfully, drank wine & cooked a frozen pizza in the little oven, and watched the sunset on the lake. I can see us many years down the road saying "remember that one year we went ice fishing for Valentine's day?" Now that's a cool feeling...doing something that you know you will remember forever.

Amazing Super Dad!

Derek is such an awesome Dada! He spends so much quality time with the kiddos. This is one of the kids favorite activities...dressing up as superheros & fighting all the bad guys in the house. Of course, it is even more fun when they get to dress Dada up too! This particular evening, I think they captured bad guys (and put them in jail) for about an hour & half straight while I was cooking dinner. What sweet memories.

Wrapped around her finger...

On Valentine's Day, Miss Andi-Pandi got a flower delivery from Derek's Dad, aka Gramps. We called to let him know that she had received them & he said "Well, I wanted to be the first man to ever send her flowers." How unbelievably sweet is that????? These grown men sure turn mushy when these baby girls steal their hearts.

Andi posing with her first flower bouquet. (Dawson wanted her to put them in the blue vase he got me for Christmas)

She wanted to smell the yellow one

And, here she is being her usual crazy self...playing peek-a-boo!

16,000+ CALORIES

I am super proud of myself...in the last month I have burned over 16,000 calories! After Andi was born, I never REALLY tried to get rid of the 'baby weight'. Oh, I have always worked out 2-3 days a week, but that is what they recommend just to stay healthy...which I was...but, the jiggly tummy from having two babies back-to-back still remained. No one understands why I am so obsessed about it. They say 'you look great in your clothes', but I say 'What if I want to look great when my clothes are missing?' So, for whatever reason, four weeks ago today I decided it was time to REALLY see if it is even possible to eliminate the jigglies. This morning was the 28th day in a row that I have worked out: I jog 3 miles on the treadmill, lift weights & do situps. Results after month one: lost 1.75 inches in the 'jiggly' area! Whoo hoo! I honestly don't care how much I weigh, what size clothes I wear, or even how many inches I loose. My goal is definitely not to be skinny, but to be tone. All I want is for me to be in the best shape I can be in. We will see what next months results bring...

Birthday singing

On the morning of my birthday back in January, I was woken up by Dawson walking into my room singing Happy Birthday to me! How sweet is that? I can't believe he remembered first thing in the morning! During the day, I managed to get both of them singing to me on video. These are just too cute not to post...enjoy!

Andi singing to me:

Dawson singing to me:

Logging Days Festival

While my Dad & my Uncle Mike's family were here, the Logging Days Festival was going on. So, we headed over to Buena Vista to enjoy it...it was a pretty cool little event. They had: sleigh rides, axe throwing, basket weaving, chainsaw carving, steer roping, blacksmith demonstrations, flapjack dinners & square dancing. 99% of these photos my Dad took...thanks Dad!

How AWESOME is this shot Dad????? There were tons of sleigh rides going around...

Me & kiddos wore our Paul Bunyan clothes because you won prizes for dressing up like him. The kids won little gift bags.

We watched a little square dancing while we warmed up inside & ate our lunch.

Here is one of the bigger sleighs

Here is the guy doing his chainsaw carving...crazy.

another sleigh ride pic

We saw quite a few of these 'Minnesota strollers'

pretty horse shot in front of the small paul & babe statues

Mike & Sarah took Dawson tubing...Dawson had a blast!

How cute is he...you can barely see him all bundled down in there! It was COLD that day! What a great day with family.

Papaw's winter visit

My Dad got to come up & spend a week with us at the end of January. It was really special for me because I have not had the opportunity to spend that much time with my Dad since before I graduated high school & I was still living at home. When the kids were at preschool Tuesday & Thursday that week, my Dad & I went on photo adventures. We had a blast.

I was a brave girl & I drove my Dad out on the lake WITHOUT hyperventilating this time!

Here is what my Dad looked like 90% of the the time he was here :-)

I took my Dad to Itasca State Park to walk across the Mississippi headwaters.

And...my Uncle Mike & his family were able to come up to join us the last weekend my Dad was here. They live in southern Minnesota & they made the 6 hour trip up to see us. It was so wonderful to see them all again!

Here is my Dad hand feeding some birds at Bemidji State Park.

Since my Dad's flight home got delayed for a day, he & Dawson got to spend another day playing in the snow together. If you look real close, you can see that that is Frosty in front of my Dad...bending WAY over!

I LOVE this image. Here are the boys enjoying their last bonus day together!

Come drive with me....

Back in January, we drove across the lake for the first time. It was an absolutely gorgeous day to experience our first lake driving experience. I was a NERVOUS WRECK! I started to hyperventilate a couple of times & I thought my heart was going to jump out of my chest it was racing so hard. It just does NOT feel natural to drive your car, with your children in the backseat, across a huge frozen lake that is about 50 feet deep! Too bad I don't have a video of myself freaking out for this post...but I did take some pics of course. Since this drive, I have driven across the lake several more times & even spent an entire day ice fishing. So, I got over my fear a little bit.

This is a great shot of what the plowed roads on the ice look like. DO YOU SEE THE HUGE CRACKS?????? I was not mentally prepared for the cracks & that is what had me totally freaking out. The DNR (Department of Natural Resources) swears it's safe though...would you trust them???

A shot while driving

This is the best shot I got where you can see the ice the best.

Apparently, they were having issues towing their ice house, so they just pulled over to the side of the ice road. weird.

This was my favorite ice house! How cute is that? They even put up the tree for decoration! If I ever had my own ice house...it would be super cute from the outside too!

This was where we exited the lake. These signs are just so funny to me when the lake is frozen. You can't swim or dive from this spot...but go ahead & drive your car out there! Welcome to the Minnesota life.

The Polar Plunge

Every year in January, Bemidji hosts its 'Brrrmidji Polar Days.' The festivities run all day long, and ALL of them happen on frozen Lake Bemidji. Some of the events are: a golf tournament, a 5k race, snowmobile racing, ice fishing competition, cross country skiing & broom ball. The most popular event of the celebration each year though, is The Polar Plunge. They cut out a rectangle shaped hole in the lake and people register to be jumpers, all to raise money for the Special Olympics. Before we moved up here, I had heard about crazy events like this & it was super fun to be able to watch it in person. There were all sorts of jumpers: young ones, old ones, costumed ones, non costumed ones & of course some crazy ones in bikinis & speedos!

Here is a shot of what the hole looked like before the jumpers began jumping in. After they began jumping in, the water started to displace & it actually flooded about 6 inches deep where all the crowds were standing to watch! Luckily, we got there early enough to get great seats on the bleachers. So, our feet were not frozen by the end of it like most everyone else's were.

There were two divers in the water the entire time who helped all of the jumpers out of the water. Very few of them could get out themselves...the water is just too cold & your body freezes up so fast! Here were some of my favorite jumpers from that day.

The firefighters

I thought these girls were super cute dressed up as paul & babe

Andi's 'what the heck are they doing' face. You can see the flooding pretty good at the bottom of this picture.

Here was Dawson's favorite...Spiderman of course.

The bikini girls.

And, the scarecrow.

I don't know if I would ever be brave enough to participate in this event, but I sure would donate to someone else who was brave enough to jump!

The Paul Bunyan snow fight

I absolutely LOVE these pictures! My kiddos decided on an impromptu snowfight one day while we were hanging out at the lake watching the 'Brrrmidji Polar Days' (I will blog about that next.) I just thought these pics were a perfect way to sum up our time spent here with the town icons in the background!

This pic is so fun...I love the huge snowball flying at Andi...I love her face...

Dawson trying to look innocent right before he pegs me with a snowball!

Nothing better than pegging your sister with one.

Andi just skips the innocent face & gives me the devious face before she throws her snowball at me!

What a fun & beautiful day!