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.