I had intended to post some pics and videos from our Christmas up in Wisconsin before the end of the year so that I could have at least one post in 2015 on toonesalive — but I forgot! So I’m retroactively posting and re-dating this for 2015. Enjoy!

Summary
We hit the tailend of a snowstorm on our way up. There wasn’t much snow, but we did end up an unplowed portion of Hwy 53 between Eau Claire and Shell Lake with an inch or so of new snow. We were driving along at 50mph (getting passed by people going even faster) and hit a deeper patch of snow on the righthand side of the car. This turned the car sideways, which I immediately countersteered (in the direction of the slide) to correct. Unfortunately, the tires grabbed and we slid the other way towards the median. I counter-steered again and this time it straightened out. Fortunately, this second part happened at a highway crossover so there was extra room in the middle otherwise we would have ended up off the road in the middle. This was an exciting end to an 18 hour overnight drive.

It snowed again very lightly a few times while we were up there, but it was mostly dry and about average temps. I got some long mountain bike rides and a few fat bike rides in to take me up over 30,000 miles for the year and complete the Rapha Festive 500. One of the fat bike rides was quite the adventure ending well after dark in light snow, which is fun to watch in a helmet mounted light (looks like a blizzard).

I was just looking back at this blog and realized we hadn’t made a single post in 2014. Well, here we go with just a few hours to go left in 2014. Here’s a link to some of the videos of fun we’ve had so far this year up in Wisconsin.

There’s nothing like having a good sledding hill right out the back door. I went with the kids to do some sledding down the hill to the old high school football field and got some good videos — including this first one — a “sledcam” view of me crashing into a ditch and then Josiah crashing into me a few seconds later.

Yesterday, I had a chance to bike back to Shell Lake from the cabin. Along the way I rode over a couple frozen lakes and down the sledding hill at the cabin with the kids. Here’s a bikecam video of me riding over a lake and then bike sledding with the kids:

Here are some more videos from the sledding action this afternoon:

We made the 18 hour drive up from Birmingham yesterday, and the kids were so excited to be in the snow that they were skiing and sledding around the house while Kristine and I got caught up on a bit of sleep. Then today we went up to Spooner for a kids 1K ski race – their first ski race. I got lots of pics and videos from the day — here are some of the best…

It has been a while since we posted here … it’s been busy in the Toone Times … Josiah is in first grade now and has been taking karate for the past few months. This past Thursday he passed his belt testing, and tonight was the belt ceremony. I got videos of both events below (the belt testing is split up into two parts) –

Also, Analise was in the Lakeside Christmas performance, see the video of her choir singing below –

We haven’t posted here in a while so I’m not sure who still reads this blog – but Analise, Josiah, and I had a great adventure this past Sunday while Kristine was running her half-marathon in Florida. We walked through the woods to Lakeside where Analise was helping host a Sunday evening coffee house with the rest of the GA’s. These are the pics that me and Josiah took (mostly Josiah – he was quite the photographer)

The weather forecast had called for a winter storm last night to bring 3-4″ of snow and only a 20% chance of snow today. Instead, we got 5-6″ of snow last night and then snow all day today bringing the total close to maybe 8″ of snow! It was really windy with strong winds and blizzard like wind gusts when I headed out on a short mountain bike ride to Becky’s to pick up cheese curds for the family to watch the end of the Packers game. After the game, we headed over to the sledding hill and got a few good runs in the snow which was packed down more now that a bunch of other kids had been sledding on it. Check out the photos and videos from the day below!

Kids are having a blast … check out the pics from playing in the snow this morning … but first a video of the snow plow clearing the street out front while Poppa Dale clears the driveway with a snowblower.

If you are viewing this on Facebook, click on over to our blog to see the photos – http://www.toonesalive.com/blog/family/?p=2979

We had a great evening at a dinner party at the Spooner Market in downtown Spooner. During dinner, it started to snow, and there was more than an inch on the ground by the time we started to drive back to Shell Lake. More than four hours later, and it is still snowing. It looks like we have maybe five or six inches. Enjoy the pictures and videos of the snow below. Also, enjoy the video of Aunt Kat playing with Analise and Josiah at the Spooner outdoor ice skating rink.

If you are having trouble viewing the slideshow, then try viewing the photos here on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/10762744@N05/sets/72157628659436619/