Winter photorama

It's been cold and snowy and perfect here in central Minnesota.

 The 11" we got last weekend have provided hours - and hours and hours - and hours - of fun.

 Elin is my indoor girl.  When Svea and Viggo suit up to go outside, Elin tells them, "I be outside in ten minutes, 'kay guys?"
She never actually goes out to play though . . .

 Well, one time, she did.

She only came in when there was an, ahem, accident to deal with.
All those winter layers are such a nuisance sometimes.

 Nate continues to teach the kids their math.
Bless him.

And they love it.

Viggo has had a lot of fun playing map games on www.seterra.net.
You should go check it out!  It's addictive!

 I've been making cinnamon rolls every Saturday morning.

Don't worry; they're easy.  I use half of the Challah bread recipe out of "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day", which takes literally all of five minutes to prepare, roll it out and spread with butter/sugar/cinnamon, roll it up, slice and put in a pan to rise overnight in the fridge.  Then I put them right into the oven when I wake up on Saturday morning, yes I bake them even during the preheat, and they turn out amazing.

Then the girls get to drizzle on the icing.

These make everyone very happy and have been a fun start to our weekend.

Viggo WON the library Lego contest!!  A $20 gift card to Target and a little Lego minifigure!
We were so happy for him.  Way to go, V-Man!

After stopping at the library to pick up his ship and gift card, we made a quick stop to pick up a Christmas tree.

Viggo was concerned that his gift card, sitting in our locked van 30 yards away from where we were looking at the trees, might get stolen.

Thankfully, there were no Target gift card bandits nearby.  Whew!

 I'm so thankful for Nate - purchasing the tree, carrying the tree, attaching the tree to the top of the car, bringing the tree inside the house, setting the tree up.  Wait - what was I doing?
 
While Nate was being amazing, I was making sure the tree was standing straight up in the tree holder.

There are no small jobs; only small people.  . . . Hold on - that doesn't sound right.

Elin plays with our little playmobil nativity set.

 Then there was the excitement of assembling a gingerbread house.

Since the Gingerbread House Disaster of 2010, I have not been all that excited about facing the task of putting together another gingerbread house.  I abstained from buying a kit (or gingerbread anything, for that matter) last Christmas.

But I couldn't say no to the children for another year.

 We followed the directions and everything turned out perfectly fine.  Surprisingly easy.  And really cheap.  This only reaffirmed to me that making your own gingerbread house from scratch is ridiculously labor-intensive and totally overrated.

 Viggo and I had a fun afternoon the other day of playing Scrabble.
We used the dictionary on my Kindle to help us.  And some other resources.
And we kind of used words that maybe don't exactly count as "real" Scrabble words.
Our version of Scrabble might be open to interpretation, but we had a lot of fun and laughed a lot!

Sometimes Viggo would reference Grandma Zeke's Scrabble expertise and say, "Grandma Zeke lets me _________________ in Scrabble."  Not wanting to question Grandma's authority, especially when the points were in my favor, I went with it.

 Our favorite words on the board were YETI and HEE-HAW.

And yes, that is the word UGLI.  As in, ugli fruit.  (Duh.)

I baked dozens of sugar cookies for our church's Christmas production and the kids helped me to frost them.

Last weekend Nate the Great kept the kids busy all day, shopping and baking cookies so I could have time to work on some special Christmas projects.

He is amazing.  Or did I already say that?  I don't think it is possible to overstate my thankfulness for him :)

Svea's cheeks and lips were not injured from the cold, so please don't worry about all the redness; it was quite temporary.  Even though she was freezing after lots of outside snow play, I can promise you this picture will always warm my heart :)  I love you lots, my little Svea!