Winter Carnival 2014

Winter Carnival when I was in college meant the end of late nights outside working on our sorority snow statue or practicing dances for skit. It meant a quick four day weekend with lots of winter special event or races- skiing, snowshoeing, snow volleyball to name a few. Time wandering around admiring the snow statues and all that hard work. And Huskies hockey!

It isn't exactly the same when we go back now, but we do make sure we take in the hockey games still. Friday night Adam got a puck from one of the linesman refs in between periods. We got to watch a solid win from Tech, too.

Saturday David and I got to enjoy a little cross country skiing at Swedtown all alone. The trees were absolutely covered in snow and beautiful.

On Saturday night we got to watch the hockey game from the new suites thanks to the Mechinical Engineering Department fundraiser. It was a ton of fun and I'm not sure I've ever seen Tech score 10 goals in one game. And Eli and Adam got to meet Blizzard!

There was also some enjoyment of snow statues. It wasn't my favorite year for statues- I think the extreme cold kept them from being as impressive as the past.

Instagram Lately

We've been shopping and thinking about bunk beds for the boys for about as long as we've known I was pregnant. Last weekend we finally picked up our purchase and put together the new beds for the boys. So far things are going really well in the beds at night and we've only had to remove the ladder once for inappropriate behavior on the top bunk.

My nearly 20 week bump:

23 week bump post work out. A little sad that I can't run anymore, but the elliptical, walking and biking still feel okay. That bump is just too big!

And Happy Valentines Day- Adam and Eli's breakfast and school valentine project:

A walk on Wednesday this week, a rare day where the weather was above freezing. It only took us 40 minutes to walk a quarter mile.

Adam actually insisted we go on a walk because the sunset was so beautiful. 

How Many Times Can This Happen?

We decided to vacation in 'da UP 'eh this winter again. We had waffled back and forth between a warm weather vacation or going to Tech for Winter Carnival and finally settled on going north when Dave found an awesome vacation rental by owner that would fit us, my parents and brother comfortably near our favorite cross country ski trails of Swedtown in Calumet Michigan. We booked the house for a long weekend of four nights a few weeks before our trip and got hockey tickets to watch the Huskies play for Friday and Saturday night.

We got to Houghton on Friday but didn't have time to drop our stuff of at the house before the hockey game. So instead we went out to dinner. After the game we drove to Calumet and only got lost once and stuck in an icy driveway. Thankfully my dad drives a cross over with AWD now and pulled our poor minivan up the hill. When we got to the house that we rented there were several cars in the driveway and people in the house. It was 10:30 at night and Eli was asleep in the car. Dave and I walked around trying to make sure we had the right place and finally approached the door.

The guy who came to the door seemed just as confused as us. We told him we booked the house and he said he did too, in July! They had 8 kids and 6 adults and after comparing our paperwork it was apparent the house was double booked! Had we dropped our stuff off before the game we would have been there first and I'm glad we weren't since they booked it first. We exchanged numbers and tried to get a hold of the owner, but finally decided to leave to attempt to find a hotel room. Winter Carnival in Houghton is a huge draw and finding two rooms on a Friday night would not be easy. Luckily the hotel in Calumet had two rooms for Friday night only and the next morning the owner of the house got a hold of us expressing his apologizes and put us up in his one bedroom cabin with an air mattress for that night until the large house was free on Sunday.

It all worked out, but it was a situation that we were just in a few short months ago. We booked three hotel rooms for an October weekend during the Colors season in Duluth for a Tech hockey game. One of the families had to cancel so David called the front desk of the hotel to cancel one room the week before our trip. We drove to Duluth and pulled into our hotel luckily at the same time as the other family and went to check in. Our rooms had been canceled, too and both Dave and Brian were arguing with the front desk. The hotel didn't want to take responsibility for their online system dropping our booking. I finally walked up and said I don't care who's fault it is I want to know what you are going to do to fix it. Quickly we had wrist bands for their water park and drink tokens and the promise that they would find us a room somewhere nearby.

They made good with their promise and found us two rooms across the street at the Day's Inn while we were at the Tech-UMD hockey game. The hotel even went above and beyond and comped the rooms for us- so completely free! Such a good outcome we decided to stay at there again on the Thursday night of our vacation to Houghton. They did not cancel our room this time.

We did get almost all of our money back from the vacation rental owner (he charged us a small fraction per night of the usual rate), but it made for a very stressful Friday night with not much sleep and it meant packing up and moving almost every-single-day of the trip which is exhausting.

The house and little cabin were on the shore of Lake Superior, which is frozen right now. So Adam and Eli got to go sledding on the icy hills while we all skied around and explored. It kind of felt like being on another planet when you were out there and I'm not sure you can capture it with a photo, but here goes.

And yes the house was worth it. For me there was probably a little too much for decoration, but I thought it looked nice.

Let's All Have A Bowl Of Email

When I'm pregnant I pretty much give up cereal in the morning, which leaves me with two options- eggs and oatmeal. Eli likes to eat what I eat, except he calls oatmeal- email. It's so cute and I try to correct him, but I like the way it sounds when he asks for email. I think he knows it's really called oatmeal, because sometimes I catch him calling it that, but then later he will insist it's called email!

One more funny Eli story. We drove to the UP this weekend for Winter Carnival. Before we left for our long drive home we went to the Mineral Museum in Houghton. Eli ended up taking care of a #2 in the bathroom right before we left and swiftly fell asleep for his nap in the car ride home. He woke up over 2 hours later in Wisconsin and was extremely crabby yelling "ouchie, ouchie, ouchie!" I thought maybe the sun was in his eyes, but then we finally got him to use his words and he said he had pooped. So we found the next available bathroom 15 miles down the road and pulled over. Dave grabbed some spare clothes and prepared himself for the mess. Except the car smelt just fine and I have a very sensitive nose. A few minutes later Dave and Eli emerged from the bathroom- Eli in the same clothing. His pants were clean and he only peed. When we got back in the car we found a baby carrot in his car seat. Poor kid thought he had an accident because he was sitting on a baby carrot!