Watch a video taken right before I went mountain biking briefly on frozen Shell Lake.

Watch this polar bear playing and the snow falling around him.

Watch three cougars prowl their pen.

Sledding was the primary form of transportation within the zoo.
Watch Poppa Dale pull Josiah around the Lake Superio zoo.

Watch Josiah run around in the snow.

firstdayskiing

guitar heroes

analise away in a manger

Aside from the $300 bill, our plumbing situation resolved pretty well.  I’m very very thankful that it wasn’t worse.  We had a clog caused by roots all the way out by the street, near the city’s sewer line.  The expensive Roto-Rooter took care of it.  But we were lucky that it was leaking at a junction in the garage, rather than backing all the way up the drains!!  Yes.  I’m thankful for plumbers today.  Not a fun job, but they deserve their pay!

We’ve got a leaking sewer line running across the top of our basement, which I found heavily dripping onto the extra car this afternoon. It’s gotten worse since we used a little water this evening, and poor Brian’s been emptying buckets to keep the basement from getting any more dirty and wet. The plumber is coming tomorrow morning. I guess if you have to have a sewer leak, this is as good as it can get. But still, not good.

I wrote a nice long post this past weekend summarizing our wonderful trip, but then it got lost in blog-space. Maybe I’ll be back later to rewrite it. Mostly, I raved about what a fabulous trip we had. The pictures tell the story. I love seeing my family and playing in the snow with my kids. I’ve been busy this week trying to bring the house back to some semblence of order, but Christmas has yet to be put away. Maybe this weekend…

It was great. Thanks!

We started out the day by taking Josiah sledding for the first time ever. He had a good time, but he was more interested in walking around in the snow like a little penguin than he was in being pulled in the sled. Analise, on the other hand, enjoyed having me run down the hill in front of her pulling her down as fast as I could go. After sledding, I changed into my bike gear and set out on a 75 mile bike ride to Duluth, MN. The plan was for Kristine to drive everyone else in the car and pick me up alongside the road however far I made it. I didn’t make it very far in the cold, snowy weather heading into a stiff wind. Nevertheless, we made it to Duluth to attend the "Zoo Year’s Eve Party" at the Lake Superior Zoo. Experiencing an outdoor zoo with 20+ inches of snow on the ground was awesome! Finally, we met Kat for dinner at Bulldog Pizza.

Here’s Josiah all ready for a busy day in the snow!

Josiah’s first sledding experience was good, but he didn’t like being tied down into the sled.

Analise didn’t want to miss the sledding action. Here I am sporting my new Christmas sweatshirt.

Josiah liked walking in the snow. Here is a closeup of Josiah that was a little
blurry, but I touched it up with the "paint daubs" filter in Adobe Photoshop.

This playful polar bear was a popular animal to see. He was actually kind of far away,
but this picture was taken with the full 12x optical zoom on our camera.

This HUGE grizzly bear looked friendly, but I wouldn’t want to get in the cage with him!

Sleds were the preferred means of transportation for young kids.

We were able to get very close to some of the animals. Here Josiah was able to pet this HUGE deer.
It wasn’t very tall, but it must have weighed half a ton because it was long and wide.

These cougars were prowling around their exhibit. One of them climbed
on top of a rock and let out a very large meow — it sounded just like a house cat!

This sleepy tiger hardly moved at all, but he did blink once or twice.

This snowy owl was hard to see sitting in the snow — but it was one of the coolest animals to see.

Hay rides at the zoo.

Another popular thing to do was sled on the big sledding hill. Analise wasn’t quite big enough to go down this hill.

The zoo was overall beautiful. In this distance is the Spirit Mountain downhill ski resort. The far rock cropping was the
cougar exhibit. The middle rock area was the polar bear exhibit. The near one I think was the seal exhibit.

Here’s the pretty sunset behind the Polar Bear exhibit.

The temperature gauge read 10 below this morning with a strong wind making the wind chill much much colder. It may be cold — but that didn’t stop us from going skiing today. Check out these pics and video (at the end) of the kids skiing.

We woke up to a very cold beautiful sunrise. Here it is at -10F (-23C)

And here is the beautiful sunrise.

Analise gets ready to go skiing in the warming hut at the Timberland Hills ski trail.

Dale skiis on ahead on the trail leaving the parking lot.

Here’s a closeup of the skiing mother and daughter.

Analise struggles a bit to get up after falling.

Analise heads out from the parking lot next to Grandma Sandy.

The whole family gets in on the skiing action. Watch everyone ski near the parking lot.

Watch the video of the cold sunrise and Analise’s snow angel.