Winter in Minnesota without snow...

...is just plain sad. Yesterday, I caught the girls doing this outside:


Winter is definitely easier without the snow, but it's not nearly as fun. Hopefully the new year will bring us some flakes!

Dorothy and Pippi

We have had a busy couple of days! Yesterday morning, I hosted a brunch for my childhood friends who were in town for the holidays. It was great to catch up. Then, in the afternoon, we went to see The Wizard of Oz at the Children's Theatre. A generous friend gave us tickets. The show was quite dramatic and very well done. Since then, the girls have taken turns pretending to be Dorothy, Glinda the Good Witch, and Toto the dog. Glinda was especially sparkly.

Today, we went to the American Swedish Institute with my dad. Joe is of Swedish heritage on both sides, and I wanted the girls to learn more about it.

The girls loved visiting "the castle." The mansion was decorated beautifully for Christmas with the rooms in styles of various countries in Scandinavia.


The girls learned about the 427-year-old Tomte who lives in the attic of the mansion. They each wrote him a letter.

We also watched the Swedish film, Pippi Longstocking, and made a Pippi craft - a "thing finder!"


Jia has been reading Pippi Longstocking. It was such fun to see Pippi come to life!

No one has yet pretended to be Pippi - which is probably a good thing!

Merry Christmas!

It is Christmas night. The girls are snuggled in their beds. (Actually Willa is snuggled on her mattress which we hauled into Jia's room so they could have a sleepover.)

We are tired, but more so, we are peaceful. We are full. We are happy. We have had two terrific days with family. The pictures tell (most of) the story.

Christmas Eve day:




Enjoying their new cousin:


Our tradition on Christmas Eve night is to give the girls matching pj's and open family gifts. This year it was Connect 4 and Operation. Wow, it's very clear we need a lot of practice before we do any surgeries!

Christmas Day:

Time to open stockings and presents!



Jia received the gift she's been dreaming of for a long time:

Willa had asked me to buy her a mermaid swimsuit. I could not find any, so I decided to make the girls slip-on mermaid tails out of swimsuit material. Willa wore hers all morning, even over her clothing when we walked Peanut. I'm thrilled that they love them.

We hosted everyone at our place on Christmas day (for the first time)!





Our day was certainly merry and bright! Hope yours was too!

Willa's Holiday Program

Willa had her holiday program at school. She has been practicing the songs for weeks. I can't tell you how many times I have heard "Feliz Navidad" lately!

Ready to go:

At the show...of course, she did great!

She belted out all the songs, and was excited to sing with all her friends.

Yay Willa!

Winter Letterboxing

We went Letterboxing again last weekend. We have had unseasonably warm temps this winter, and rain had melted away all the snow. A light new blanket had fallen on Friday night, and it made everything so pretty.

Peanut joined us on the adventure! The first park had a lot of deer and coyote, and her nose was working full-time!

Our first letterbox was hidden in the woods under the remains of an old tree fort!

As for our second and third letterboxes, well, we never found them. The clues for our second letterbox were confusing, although the park was pretty.

The third letterbox was under a bridge near our house, but the area was under construction so we got hot cocoa instead! It was a good end to the journey.

Thanks for the comments about Jia, too. Her surgery went well!

Gingerbread Houses

We had our annual Gingerbread House get together with our family friends, the Thompsons. The kids spent about two hours decorating their houses this year. (An amazing amount of candy was consumed during that time as well!) It was great fun as usual.



In a side note (and in stark contrast to the story above), our school district has been encouraging kids to support the famine relief efforts in Somalia. Jia came home from school and told us all about it. We gave her some money for donation. I also told her that my friend Khatra, who she knows, and who is a Somali refugee, is currently in Kenya, providing care to Somali famine victims. We have a large Somali community here and Jia has classmates who are from Somalia. I think this helped it hit home more for her. She donated the money the following day, and after she returned home, decided to donate her entire piggy bank, too. The day after that, I heard her tell Willa all about Somalia, and she convinced Willa to donate her piggy bank! They then ran around the house chanting, "Let's help Somalia! Let's help Somalia!" I love their big hearts.

Please keep Jia in your thoughts on Wednesday morning as she is having surgery on her ears (tubes) to help with her hearing. Thank you!

A hot and cold weekend

We traveled to Duluth for a weekend of opposites with our friends Susie, Jim and Katie. We stayed at our favorite kid-friendly hotel with a steamy warm waterpark, and then strolled through a spectacular light display on the shores of frosty cold Lake Superior. One thing had no opposite...we had great fun the whole time!

Now for loads of pictures!

On our balcony where we watched mammoth ships glide by:

At the waterpark:

Can you tell she just ate a blue sucker?



We rode an old train from the hotel to the light display - a double decker - and we were on top!

Someone was quite excited about it.

The light display is called Bentleyville. It was humongous, and beautiful. Plus, it was free and included hot cocoa, cookies, marshmallow roasting and more!





There were many characters to hug.

Rudolph and Mr. Penguin were top on the list.


The next morning we clambered around the rocks at Canal Park.

Willa found the perfect "mermaid" rock:



The kids are already asking when we can all return!