Christmas on Ice

One of our favorite traditions here is at Christmas time is Christmas in Ice over in North Pole. This is a yearly ice sculpturing contest that they put on every December. It is truly amazing what they can create in the ice. Below are some of the pieces, they even created slides and merrigo rounds for the kids. Although it had warmed up for us ( a toasty -11), we were only able to stay for an hour and ended up over at the Santa Claus house to warm up. A great family trip!

Making snow

So, today and tomorrow are suppose to be the last of our extreme cold temps for a little bit and we decided we better take advantage of it and try and make snow again(dad wasn't here for last year's attempt). So we went all out. We did it from the second story window, I colored the water so it would be easier to follow as well.

You can see the stream that he has thrown out the window here.

Within seconds it has started freezing leaving this crazy fireworks looking display of snow.

I just think this is a fun shot. The main part of the thrown water has it the ground but it is still snowing.

Santa Claus house

So since we live 15 miles from the North Pole we have made it a yearly tradition to go see Santa Claus at his house. This house is very cool and stuffed full of way to many things that this mama could spend money on but it also has the big guy in there so off we go. When u get there you have to get a number and then wait your turn, so we usually kill time by browaing and photographing with some of the props provided by the shop. There is a beautiful polar bear who is very friendly.

This polar bear seemed very friendly at first but after I took the first shot something crazy would happen and it became a bit aggressive. It put Thud in a head lock, it sat on Sassy and the only one it seemed to like was Goobers.

And Scotty was even surprised to find some long lost family. It brought him to tears to be reunited with his kin.

Finally after finishing our shopping and picking out some candy we were able to get in to see Santa Claus. He was as awesome as ever. He asked each of the kids what they wanted for Christmas.

This was Sassy explaining that she just wanted a pony for Christmas. Thankfully he explained that ponies didn't fit well into bedrooms and so might not be a good idea.

Santa's look cracks me up. He just asked Gabe what he wanted for Christmas and his prompt reply was an F-16. LOL

And of course, Santa's house just wouldn't be Santa without his reindeer. They were busy chomping away and Scotty explained to the kids that they were Carb loading for their long night tomorrow night. What goofs!

Dog treats

So I am an avid animal lover and have two wonderful labs that I am lucky enough to have in our family. Our labtard is older and goes by the name of Duke. He isn't as full of energy as he used to be but still finds ways to crack me up. He also become a bit more picky about what treats he will take so I started hunting for some treats I could make at home. And thanks to my love affair with pintrest I found a recipe that both my labtard and my cracklab( my 3 year old golden lab) LOVE! I found the recipe off of the blog : A kitchen muse. Below are some shots of the baking process and me being stalked by the labtard after I had him try one :)

The dough is very sticky and I highly suggest getting rice flour to try if your pup's stomach is easily upset. But once again, I have labs so they eat everything!

Since it is Christmas I went with the star shapes just for fun!

He is patiently waiting and watching for his next treat!

Art

So sassy and I decided to play artsy fartsy this evening and dug out her old crayons, some canvases, hot glue and my hair dryer. We checked out YouTube videos on how to do it and dug in. (Just a side note, if u do this I highly recommend keeping the wrappers on the crayons as it keeps the crayon stuck to the canvas better) first we took the earth tones and made a boring design, next we took the little dots we had and made a polka dot design, next the warm colors we made a heart and the cool colors we mimicked the aurora . Then we covered the floor with plastic and started blow drying the art. ( another side note, pinks blues and blacks melt faster than the others) once we finished drying them we added some embellishments and wala!