Staycation

This past weekend we tried taking a "staycation". Last fall, Mike played in the Concordia golf tournament and won a free night in a local hotel -- so local it was less than a mile from our house. On Saturday afternoon we headed over to the hotel, which had a great kiddie pool with slides and most importantly, heated water! For supper we tried HuHot, a mongolian grill. It was delicious and very kid friendly -- there was so much cooking noise going on, Lily could be her silly self. More swimming that night, movies in the hotel room, hotel brunch, more swimming. . . you get the idea. Best of all, when it was time to go home, we only had 10 blocks to go!

I didn't take many pictures, but here is Lily in her new princess PJs. I think they are hideously ugly, but she adores them!

This video captures a bit of the excitement and general silliness Lily felt about being in a hotel room. Ahhh, simple pleasures.

Rare

Those of you who don't live around here may be surprised that making a good snowman is actually pretty rare for us. Although we have plenty of snow, it is often too cold for the snow to stick together well enough to make a decent snowman.
However, Saturday was a perfect snowman day. As fat, wet flakes fell, we (Mike, Lily, my parents, and I) filled our front yard with a snowmom, snowdad, snowbaby, and even . . .


a snowgiant! (Yes, that is a parrot on his shoulder -- look familiar, Uncle Dale?)

Fight the Frost

Last Saturday we took Lily to the United Way fundraiser at the Fargodome. The arena floor was filled with 30 of the largest inflatable games I have seen.

Lily was in awe for about two seconds then off and running. She got a tame ride on a rodeo bull.
There were huge slides.

And all kinds of crazy themed games, including this dino where you climbed in the mouth and exited through a hole in the rear!

For $6, Lily played all morning with very little waiting in line. Well worth it!