Embrace the cold

Now this may seem silly but I feel that I can't complain about the weather. I mean, we chose to move here. We could have done more research on say, San Antonio, or maybe Albuquerqe, and been sitting by a pool right now. But here's a weird statistic...a very high % (close to 85% I think) of Minnesotans were born here. When we lived in AZ it was the exact opposite. Isn't that strange? In a way maybe the natives can't complain about the cold either. They could move away.

I must say, if you do want to move to the arctic, you might as well move to the city of parks and lakes. Last year I started ice skating because there was a small ice rink near our apartment building. When we looked at this house last year I was very excited to see that the nearby park also turns into an ice skating rink in the winter. Yesterday we finally got a "heat wave" i.e. it was in the 20s. Right when Penelope went down for her nap, I grabbed my skates, walked one block and was on the ice for an hour. It works well for us because Chris does not skate at all. He had no problem staying home. This park is great! They have 2 hockey rinks and an open rink. Plus they offer hockey leagues and figure skating lessons. I went in the warming house and found cubbies filled with skates you can borrow. It is all on the honor system. You find your size, skate, and then return them. Isn't that cool?! Since it was so warm there were a ton of people there. I met a little girl named Hazel that was literally skating circles around me. She is only 4 years old. A bunch of kids were playing tag, and then there were the group of boys that skated really fast straight into the snow bank...hmmm...no wonder many of the parents made their kids wear helmets! It made me excited to think of teaching Penny to skate. I took skating lessons when I was 12. It meant my mom and I driving 2 hours to Tucson for an expensive 1/2 hour group lesson. That only lasted 4 weeks before I gave up on that activity. Penny and I will only have to walk 5 mins for a whole afternoon of fun...maybe we'll even talk Daddy into joining us some time. After skating I was heading over to the Birchwood cafe which is 2 blocks from our house. The Star Tribune voted their hot chocolate as the best in the twin cities and I still haven't tried it. Right then Chris called with a screaming Penny in the background so she probably saved me from drinking double the calories I burned.

When I got home there was a lovely cooking smell. Chris was cooking up the venison Lacey brought us. Lacey goes deer hunting every year so she gave us some steaks. Having the hunter deliver your food...now that's local eating! We have a wonderful venison stew that we'll be eating all week. We are getting 6 inches of snow today and the high this week will only be about 5. For the rest of the week, my way of embracing the cold will be with a nice fire, a warm blanket, and a snuggly blanket!

Here's a picture of Cece while chris was cutting up the venison. She doesn't act like this with burgers so she somehow knew it was wild game :)