First half in February

The cold has been relentless. Usually we go through freeze-thaw cycles, but temperatures barely go above freezing. The snow is piling up, at least we have enough space to build with and enjoy the snow and ice. There has also been lots of reading and arts and crafts indoors.

This is perfect to blow soap bubbles - they will freeze quickly and beautifully when touching the ground, when temperatures are -10C or less. Though they are pretty hard to capture on photo, but lots of fun to see.

Playing on our snow ramp for hours at a time:

 Ice flowers on our window:

 Frozen water in a cup on the inside windowsill after a cold night

Birds:

On the pond:

 Following coyote tracks

 Some animal ate some phragmites shoots

Three kids on a sled:

 From pond to beach:

 Ice and sand:

 Silvan is still drawing birds regularly:

 Little brother has fun dressing up and bouncing around the house:

Melting ice with salt and watching the food color going down the little tubes the salt crystals "drill":

Painting with colored shaving cream in the bath tub:

 Making a mess with cloud dough:

Silvan's cardinal

 Silvan's cedar waxwing:

Outside again:

 Early morning birding, 5-6 chickadees in our hedge

 Nogusa packing packages

 Filing sticks and arrows

 Outside walks

 Bunny

 The point

 Silvan is quick on his feet and usually the first near the water:

 Fun with duplo

More snow play:

Rice with raw eggs and fish flakes are an easy lunch after time in the cold (the red cheeks!):

Sword fight at dusk

Yet another blizzard kept us inside for Valentine's day - that's a lot of wind and snow even for us here in a short time:

Nogusa was reading about submersibles

The next day it got super cold, we made bread and started building a snow fort: