Cold weather sledding

We went back today and the wind was out, so this time the cold was serious.

Here is Van going down the ice hill.

The view from the top

 The view from the middle

The kids going down penguin style

 Van sandwhich

 Cool fort

 Pretty views

 We added to the fort

Cold weather walk

Yesterday morning when we woke up it was -2F. Svea called the hotline and sure enough, ski practice was canceled. Svea and I still wanted to get the kids outside but I was skeptical, what could we do that would be fun enough that they wouldn't mind the cold?

Svea had a great place, down near our old house in Oceanview there is a sledding hill that you don't need sleds for. We played on that for a while and then took a walk out onto the bluff build forts from the dead trees. We had only planned to be out for about 30 mins but ended up staying for almost 3 hours (luckily it had warmed up to between 7 - 15F while we were out so that helped too).

I didn't bring my camera but here are a couple pictures Svea took; we're going to go back again today so I'll take one of the cool sledding hill.

 On the way home we found this sign that said

AKRON ELECTRIC, INC

Akron, Ohio

where Andy's dad and Pat live, and one of the places we visited on our most recent lower 48 trip.

Dill

This was my Christmas present from Andy. It grows fresh herbs so we can use them for cooking.
There are two kinds of basil, mint, cilantro, parsley, chives, and dill.

The dill was the first to sprout. And over the last couple weeks it has been exploding (unfortunately this picture was taken after we removed most of it).

The goal of today was to make a dinner that used a lot of dill.
Andy picked lamb, and I picked potato salad with arugula and dill and roasted cauliflower and potato soup with dill whipped cream.

So Esther and I went to the store so get the ingredients we needed.

Obviously, it would have been cheaper to just throw the dill away. But nonetheless, we persevered.

Van was a great helper. I gave him a series of jobs for the soup and salad.

 

 

 

  

First done was the potato salad. The store didn't have arugula, so I used lettuce instead.

Andy set that on the porch to cool.

 

Seeing us work, Esther was inspired to do some cooking as well with her milk.  Just a little mixing and pouring.

Esther was around to help in other ways. Like making sure my left foot never moved too fast.

Next done was the soup.
The roasted cauliflower and potato soup is on the left and the dill whipped cream is on the right.

The kids got some first, since they were pretty hungry by this time.

It was a hit. Van called it porridge. He had 2 bowls.

Andy was making the lamb on the grill while Van, Esther and I were working in the kitchen. Here is the whole meal together.

Esther enjoying her meal.

Then when we were done, there were only a few dishes to clean up.

Luckily while I cleaned, I had Esther to help me organize the Tupperware drawer.  On top of a puzzle Van had put together during the breaks in cooking. (Esther also took the liberty of taking the puzzle apart again.)

All in all it was a successful night and a successful use of dill. We still have more dill, but I guess that means we can make some of these yummy recipes again.