Thanks for the Valentines Day cards!

Thanks for the cards, Grandmother Joan, Boopy and Granny Jean!

This is the card Sabine made for Vivian.

Igloo building 101

This is how Bret began our igloo. Mining blocks from all the snow that's fallen off the North roof of our house.


He painstakingly set up a circle (using a stake in the ground and some rope, spray painted with surveyors' paint) and added a doorway...and began stacking blocks. While trying to figure out how to build it up, he found the following video (it's long...but extremely valuable...great music...and it's from CANADA! Hey, if anyone should know igloos, they should, right?)



Ahhhh...the magic of the upward spiral, and building in the correct direction -- apparently there's a right and a left handed version. Maybe next time...The Eskimos did their whole igloo in 1.5 hours...Bret's took...a little longer (well, it's not done yet)...he says he scratched his head for that long...just trying to figure out how to do it...

Princess Vivian

Sabine is her personal photographer. And her tattoo artist in residence.

I stand corrected...

...and it's not the first time. I guess you can swing on your swingset in the middle of winter, even when there is about 2' of snow surrounding it, when you ask daddy if he could please make it so. (That's Bret climbing up into the playfort to close the door.)

Science lesson

Please, don't report me to PETA (is there a PETInsects branch?). For some reason, we have had a few flies in the house -- I don't know where they've been hiding with all the snowy weather -- but Sabine wanted to catch one. So this poor fella (gal?) was buzzing on his back on the window sill, and Sabine put him/her into her bug jar thing and gave him/her a bit of apple to eat...alas, it looks like it just didn't cut it. Sorry 'bout that fly.

Tape is cheap

Vivian started by putting tape over her mouth (really, I swear, I've never done that to her or Sabine (or Bret!)), then moved on to one of the kitchen cabinets. Fifteen minutes of fun!

Snow, snow everywhere...

These are from a few days ago...that's the bike Bret rides to the in town ski area with his skis in the makeshift burley...



The back yard swingset...no swinging for us for a while!


The front yard pile...BTW, for those of you in warmer climes, the extension cord you see in the tree is for plugging in the car at night when it gets really cold (like 20 below)...keeps the battery warm (or something...who cares, it works!)