Snow and Ice and January Adventures!

January's an interesting, exciting and odd month.  First there's the coming down off the high of the holidays and getting back into our "routine" which often only points out how fragile our "routine is.  Then there's the combination of resolutions, goals and planning combined with the craziness and bitterness of the winter that leads to a lot of ups and downs.  In preschool we've even been talking about goals and went to visit our neighbor's vet clinic.  The kids loved the "balloons" and feeding the dog carrots!

 We headed out for some skiing and tested out Matthew's new skis.  He's slow but steady

 But loves the downhill parts the best!

 We also did more boot skating, though Matthew found a more efficient way around.  I don't even know what to think about this!

 In the meantime Matthew's been doing lots of fun drawing with some of his new "how to draw" books.  On the side, I highly recommend the Ed Emberley books, or any step by step drawing book for young kids (especially young boys) who don't particularly like sitting down to practice letters.

 Catherine has been hamming it up!

 While Matthew has been playing with our new kids camera case and app:

 And taking selfies:

 A few weekends ago we took the kids to West Yellowstone.  Our main goal was to do some ice fishing but there were all these snow berms that kept the kids busy for quite a while!

 Our ice fishing adventure started with a safety lecture while Catherine hung out in my lap:

 Then we took to the ice:

 It was a goreous day!

 Catherine had quite the little dance to make her line jig:

 Unsurprisingly, we didn't catch anything (along with the other 50+ kids on the ice!) but we had a good time.  After we left the lake we headed into town with a few minutes to kill so we decided to head out on the photo scavenger hunt! We searched through downtown for different animals:

 And a final pic with a "moose" for end of the hunt!

 We then hit the IMAX for the Yellowstone movie.  While I think the movie only gets 1/2 a thumbs up, it was a nice break and Catherine's first movie:

 After the movie we had dinner with friends and then it was time for snowmobiles:

 And climbing up this giant snow berm!  Matthew loved it!