I have some fun winter photos to share; some are from before Puerto Rico and some are from after, so this is not quite chronological order, but oh well.
Here are a couple from Winter Carnival, back in early February. We put Willow in the carrier and walked all the way from our house down to the end of the Tech campus and back to look at all the snow statues. It was snowing pretty hard that day. This one, with Josh and Willow, you can see one little snow statue in the background and also a broomball game, which we stopped to watch for awhile. Funny story: one of the broomball teams' uniforms is a T-shirt with a huge Elmo face on it, and some of the team members live across the street from us. One day Willow and I were playing out in our yard, and the guy came out of his door wearing the uniform. Willow got super excited and pointed and said "MELMO!". Ha. I had to yell over to him that Willow thought he was Elmo.
This picture shows one of the snow statues a little better. It was a Harry Potter theme. It's always hard to get good photos of those snow statues since everything is white. They sure are amazing though.
Mid-February, Willow, Beth and I cross-country skied in "Ski for Heart", a fundraiser ski at the Swedetown trails. It raises money for the Omega House (a hospice) and also the local ski trails. It was really fun (perfect weather helped that), and there was yummy food at the end. I definitely want to do it again next year. Willow fell asleep during the ski.
Here are a couple pictures just playing in our front yard. One day Willow and I (mostly me) made a snowman. She loves snowmen and was pretty excited about it. She even gave him a kiss. We made him right outside the window so she could look out from inside and see him. She says "No-man!". We kept him there for a few days until eventually he melted enough that I had to sneak out and flatten him - he was starting to look pretty grisly and I didn't want to traumatize her, haha!
Then last Friday night we went up to Calumet to watch the start of the Copperdog 150, a sled dog race! it was really, really fun. We went up at 7-ish and weren't planning to stay very long since Willow would have to go to bed, but she was having a great time, so we ended up staying pretty late (meaning, like, 9:30 - late by our current standards!). We watched the doggies, then we went to this area where they had two big bonfires, food, drinks (they had this awesome hot spiced wine - $3 for a huge cup!), live music, and then at the end - fireworks! There actually were a lot of little kids there too, but all the grown ups were partying it up! We all had a great time. Here's Willow on my back watching a dog team race by.
And one of me and Willow - she's making a weird face.
This video is pretty intense - you may want to turn down your volume before you start it. It has fireworks plus an 80s cover band. :)
You might think it couldn't get much better than hearing a cover band play Cheap Trick while simultaneously watching a fireworks show, but actually, the most exciting thing about the past month was that two of our best friends welcomed new babies and we got to meet both of them! First Ava Rae Martell was born on Febuary 10 (I hope that's the right date Am) and our friends Mark and Amy adopted her a couple days later. They live in Minnesota, but we were able to go visit after we got back from Puerto Rico - we took one extra day off of work so we could swing it. Here's a photo of Willow with Ava. She was sort of interested in the baby, but not too much. She didn't seem quite ready to hold a newborn by herself, so Josh held Ava next to Willow.
Then two weeks later, Ruth and Chad welcomed Margot June! She was born while we were in PR, so we were doing a lot of texting back and forth down there to hear the progress. We went over to visit as soon as we could. Here's a pic of me holding Margot, and I don't know what's up with the expression on my face - I'm not high, really. You can see Willow down there by my legs. I think she might have been a little jealous.
We are so happy for you guys!! I can't wait to go camping and stuff with all the girls in a couple years. Willow will be the "big girl" of the crew, hard to imagine.
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