Oh the noise!

We recently drove north along the Mississippi River to see trumpeter swans. About 2,000 of them! We also saw geese, ducks and an eagle!

We arrived just before feeding time. It was cold, but so very worth it. The birds were massive, majestic, and LOUD! 

We loved watching them fly in for breakfast.

And watching them form a perfect circle when it was time to eat.

To get a panoramic view and the full effect of the noise, it helps to watch this video of the swans (and the girls pretending to be swans)!

Jia and I are now reading one of my favorite books, The Trumpet of the Swan. Love it!

Outdoor Fun

As winter comes to a close (I think), we've been making sure to enjoy all our favorite winter activities. We spent more time skiing. We did the long trail this time (took about 1 1/2 hours). I was so proud of the girls!

We've also been skating:

We've been snowshoeing. It involved some of this:

 

Some of this:

And some of this:

We also had our usual once-a-year treat: maple snow taffy. It's made by boiling maple syrup and butter to a certain temperature and then pouring it onto snow, which turns it into candy.

I made it on a snowy afternoon for the girls and our neighbors. I poured it on the snow in front of them. (It was hard to stop eating for the picture!)

 Yum!

Piano lessons

Jia started piano lessons. She loves it. 

It is good for her, too. She's a very fast learner at school, and is used to easily getting things right the first time. Therefore, she expected to look at a song and play it perfectly right away, and is learning that it takes some effort and perseverance! She has been practicing non-stop. She even started composing her own music.

Perhaps channeling her adoration for Hans Christian Andersen and Brothers Grimm, here are the lyrics to her first song:

The greedy pearl fairy has her lovely lovely looks,
but inside her heart you can see only black,
the blackest of night you have ever seen.
She brags about her looks just to make you feel bad,
she does, she does, she does.
She's always in a bad mood,
it's true, it's true.
No one can find anything good about her,
no, no, no, no.
It's really really true, it is, it is.
She lives in the icy castle in the north, it's in the north.
It's really really cold, really, really cold.
She eats slugs for breakfast, and snails for lunch.
Ick, ick, ick, ick, it's gross.

I love the ending. She has now moved onto songs with more pleasant topics. In fact, she just composed "Song For My Beloved Parents" numbers 1-7.  So sweet. I took piano lessons for many years and enjoyed it. I hope she continues to do so!

Valentine's Day

We love our holidays. For Valentine's Day, as our valentine to the girls, we decided to throw a Valentine Tea Party for girls and dolls. We let each girl invite three friends.

We used my grandmother's tea cup collection, pink and silver china and linens, and dainty decor. The dolls had tea cups, a tea pot, creamer and sugar as well. Joe used his best British accent to serve them. (You can click to enlarge the pictures.)

  

 

 

 

  

For the food, we served heart-shaped Napoleons filled with raspberries and vanilla cream, watermelon hearts, strawberries with Nutella, and other treats. We also served raspberry tea. The hit of the party, however, was the sugar cubes! Never has so much tea been drunk!

 

 

    

 

We had camping, horses and a bakery set up for the dolls in Jia's room.

 

 

 

Willa's room had gymnastics and other sports, and the doll hospital. 

 

 

We had a craft table in the basement where the girls made valentines, bookmarks, votives and bracelets for themselves and their dolls. I did not get too many pictures down there as I was wielding a glue gun for most of the time. :-)

 

Overall, it was so much fun. I think it will be an annual tradition!

Xin nian kuai le!

We celebrated Lunar New Year by attending an event held by the Chinese Heritage Foundation. The girls learned new songs, ate yummy food, prepared dumplings, received red envelopes and did papercutting. They also participated in a contest and Jia won two all-day passes to rides at the Mall of America!

We ate a special Chinese meal at home, too, to celebrate, and girls were excited to dress up for it.

 

 Fun!

Sleepovers

Jia and her sweet new friend, Ava, have been spending a lot of time together...including two sleepovers (with more planned)! Here they are at their first one:

 

I had to laugh when Ava's mom sent me this picture because we were in the middle of doing this:

 

 

They don't look ready to sleep, do they?

 

 

Here they are at their second sleepover:

 

They have so much fun together. I'm glad they found each other!

Frozen fun

It has been chilly here, but we've been managing to have fun both inside and out.

We've had a few very cold days (as in fifteen below with thirty below windchill). Such cold days allow for terrific science experiments! We threw some batches of boiling water into the air, and most of it turned into a cloud! We filled a balloon with water, added red and purple food dye, and it turned into a beautiful turquoise (?) ice marble! We were confounded by the resulting color, but it was indeed pretty. We froze raw eggs and used them to hammer nails, too!

Willa also had the sledding hill and ice rink to herself one morning!

We joined Jia's girl scout troop for roller skating at Roller Garden. It was the girls' first time. They did so well. Jia just slowly shuffled around until she got the hang of it. Willa was a different story. I get such a kick out of her when she tries new things. I remember when she tried ice skating, she immediately tried to do figure eights. With roller skating, she was doing all these funky moves with her feet. I'm not sure what she was tried to accomplish, but I think she was trying to mimic the people who were lifting up their legs and crossing them over.  She fell down really hard a few times and even flipped over once, but it didn't seem to phase her!

 

Love the kooky dinosaur skater mural there!

 

Anyway, we had a great time and I think it may become a regular family thing!