All Aboard for Spring

Spring is finally starting to make it's appearance -- no buds on the trees yet, but the roads are pretty clear now, with a few days even in the forties. We've been greeted by an overabundance of new potholes, and "potrivers" as well... I didn't know asphalt could erode like that! Apparently the city doesn't bother to repair the roads much, they just set the speed limit at 30 and call it good...

One thing I love about Duluth though -- every day the lake changes depending on the lighting and weather. Today it is bright blue slashed with white ice; tomorrow the ice might be gone, or it could be frozen over again. It's an ever changing view.

Note to reader: I have to apologize for the quality of the following photos in this post, they were taken with my new digital video camera which apparently is not meant for high quality stills...plus, no flash.

We took a field trip to the train museum on Thursday while the big kids were in school (when we bought our season passes to the kid's museum, the Depot was included). Taron and Ella enjoyed climbing on the trains and checking out the displays of life in the old days. Here is Taron at the wheel of the engine...

Well, it's not exactly a wheel, more like a bunch of levers and gauges.

And of course, their favorite part was the little Thomas train sets in the lobby...

We made crowns from construction paper one day, and I think they wore them for three days straight... so I snapped a photo:

And a few minutes ago, Sierra came out with the little ones, all decked out in their "spy" gear: full black down to the boots... so I snapped another photo:

Well, that's all for today folks, Happy Spring!

Catchin' Up

Knock knock.

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Who's there?

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Apparently not the Smith's lately. I apologize for the lag in blogging, I don't know what got into me. Maybe the doldrums of winter, maybe the loss of my trusty friend, Mr. Digital Camera, or maybe the neverending cyclone of children tearing through my house while I attempt to salvage the remains...

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Whatever it is, I apologize.

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Here is a summary of some of our goings on:

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Solei was finally able to go skiing with us again, now that her arm is healed. Taron has gone twice so far and can go down some of the hills on his own, but still needs dad's help on most of them. Sierra is doing well, but had a scary incident where she almost fell off the lift, I was holding her over the edge and with Solei's help managed to pull her back up. . These photos are from last weekend at Spirit Mountain, which is just on the other side of town.

And here is a video -- I finally got them to work on here after uploading for a few hours...

I had my birthday in February, Chris got me a coat tree and a new digital camcorder, which fortunately takes still pictures since my digital camera has gone AWOL.

Sierra and her friends are learning a dance for the school talent show, they had a sleepover a few weekends ago to practice. They looked the moves up on the internet (it's from the new Hannah Montana movie) and are teaching themselves. I am pretty impressed with their determination and self motivation.

We have had a few bugs this winter but nothing too serious, just flu-type stuff. It gets old fast though when you can't go outside because it's -20 degrees. Fortunately, the last few days have been in the upper 40's, low 50's range and the snow is finally starting to melt. I can even see grass in some spots.

We bought season passes to the Children's museum, which includes the train Depot. It has a big castle room where the kids have a blast dressing up in medieval attire and exploring the exhibits. It's not a huge museum, but it has enough to keep them busy for a good few hours.



Solei had her first real babysitting job a few weekends ago for the Appleby's. Everything went well and she was in seventh heaven to come home with a crisp 20 dollar bill. She has it pretty crumpled though because of this trick: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWW-aiTXmKc&feature=related

I know I have mentioned our plumbing problems before, it has only gotten worse. Being a new house, it should all be under warranty, but the builder and realtor are both trying to place the blame on each other so I don't know who to go to. Long story short, we do not have a kitchen sink right now, the realtor's plumber came today and said it needed a whole new faucet and turned off the water completely. Our drain in the upstairs bathroom was also leaking -- through the ceiling -- so we haven't used that sink for weeks. The builder's plumber is coming on Saturday, but until then, I think we will just eat out -- since I can't do dishes -- hey, every cloud does have a silver lining!

Last Sunday I took the little kids for a drive by the lake shore and we got out to take pictures. It felt like we had taken a trip to Alaska or the Antarctic (Taron kept asking if we were going to Canada), the shore was all ice and little icebergs were floating in the water. We saw people ice fishing in their huts and Taron wanted to go "see their holes" but I wasn't about to trek out on the ice, which appeared to be melting pretty fast in the sun. It was crazy how those guys camp out so near the edge of the ice.

And another video...note how close these guys fish to the edge of the ice, crazy!!!

Well, I'm sure there is more I am missing, but I can catch up later, it's bedtime.