Baby it’s cold outside

First things first - I was a guest on Elisabeth’s blog yesterday! Hop over there to find out a good story about the origin of my name - and my feelings about my name as a child!

Now back to the task at hand. And look! A post that isn’t about 2023! At the halfway point of January!

We’ve gotten off pretty easy so far this winter in Minnesota but Mother Nature has woken from her slumber and real winter has arrived in these parts. Cold temps hit on Friday with a feels like temp of -12F. We were supposed to go to my parents’ lake home for the weekend but the forecast showed -30 to -40F windchill temps by Sunday and possibly more snow. So we postponed our visit and hunkered down for the long weekend. 

How does one get through a weekend with bitterly, dangerously cold temps? On Saturday, the answer was screens. Lots of screens. 

Cuddled up on the couch watching a movie

I don’t have much guilt about this to be honest. There is only so much I can do to entertain 2 small children when going outside isn’t advised. So they watched Kung Fu Panda 3 and Mario Brothers on Saturday. But that allowed me to thoroughly clean our kitchen in the morning (a January cure task! My completion rate for the January cure isn’t great but I have done all of the organization tasks so I’m calling it a success) and make a kind of putzy Indian Curry in the afternoon that I only make maybe once a year since it takes a couple of hours (worth the effort as it tastes amazing).

We did other things besides watch movies and tv, though. Taco has gotten quite good at puzzles. He happily put 4 together on his own. He couldn’t do these without assistance a couple of months ago. It’s so cool to see their brains develop!! 

Awkwardly smiling by his favorite of the 4 puzzles

Sunday was colder but we had to get out of the house because the boys had gotten terribly squirrelly after not leaving the house on Sat! So after my Caroline Girvan workout (36th workout of the epic heat program) I braved the -30F windchills and took the boys to an indoor playground. Paul loves the place we went but it was a little advanced for Taco. He still had fun but could have left after 30 minutes and Paul could have stayed for hours. We stayed for about 1:15 as a compromise. Taco liked the gym areas with little trikes and such but some kids were zipping around like madmen so we weren’t in there a ton. This place has a big climbing/slide area but it was too intimidating for Taco.

Our afternoon activity was Paul’s swimming lesson while Taco napped. He moved up a level this session and is being VERY challenged. Our plan is to keep him in lessons through the spring and then take the summer term off.

Phil, Paul, and I had the day off on Monday for MLK day but Taco’s school was open. So he went to school and Phil and Paul went to Phil’s mom which meant I was alone in the house for much of the day! I worked out, finished deep cleaning the fridge (such a satisfying task!), watched some of Lessons in Chemistry, read, and basked in the silence. 

How was your weekend? Was it a long one for you? We had a nice weekend but I’m ready to get back to our routines.