Happy New Year 2011!

The kids have been having a blast this week playing with the toys they got for Christmas. After building M's cabin with Lincoln Logs, he put the cowboy that came with the set in the house. D wanted one of her princesses to go in the cabin, too, so Ariel aka The Little Mermaid went up on the widow's walk. Ariel then proceeded to ask the cowboy to marry him and get married "over here...away from the cabin." Neither the cowboy or M was too interested in the marriage proposal.



My Uncle Robb and Aunt Lynne sent the music to Beauty and the Beast for D as she is so in love with the characters from this movie. When I told her what it was and started to play it, she immediately ran to get on a princess dress and found her two Belle's and the Beast and had a dance party in the play room.




Even Hunter Dan (M's turkey hunting action figure) got in on the dance party action.



She just loves that CD and I think we listened to it five times in two days...we'll all have it memorized soon!

D dressed as Cinderella for her friend's princess birthday party.



We spent New Year's Eve at the cabin with friends Ron, Jennifer, and their son. The kids just love running around the loft area.



We had the most fabulous spread of appetizers...so yummy! I may have to actually adopt a New Year's Resolution after eating this feast.



Thankfully Jennifer and I were able to go out cross country skiing a couple of times. We weren't sure what the conditions would be like after the freezing rain and cold, cold temperatures, but it was great! Saturday morning when we woke up there was a light dusting of snow on everything and the sun even came out while we were on the trails. It was awesome!





The kids played so well together all weekend. They did tons of puzzles, colored, played hide-and-go-seek, and in general just giggled together.





The silly face pose.



Family photos.





Saturday evening, Steve decided it was time to tackle another cabin project. So, he tore down the wall in the "bedroom" downstairs to make the room larger and make better use of the space beside the stairs. Our hope is to actually make this into a bedroom for the kids and put an egress window in the room, plus bunk beds for them and friends to use.

Here are the before shots:



We are going to take out the wall Steve is holding a hammer to and move it next to the stairway.



The hallway after:



This is the before inside the small room as it was before:



And after:



This is the view from the living area downstairs looking into the bedroom area:



Daddy and D put out corn for the deer, and they came several times Saturday night and were there Sunday morning when I opened the shades. The kids had a great time sitting in front of the window watching them eat and get closer and closer.



The kids had a great time going down the slide into the snow Sunday morning.



Can you read the temperature? I think it was like 10-15 degrees today. We think our cabin must be in the Bermuda Triangle for thermometers or something...every one we get doesn't seem to work properly or dies out on us, so Steve finally bought the old fashioned outdoor kind. After about three days in a row of it reading 20 degrees, we knew something must be up with this one, too. He took it off the tree and Ron flung some ice off of it, so now it seems to be working (hopefully!).



Sledding down one of the hills on our property.