Red Bull Crashed Ice - St. Paul

Crashed Ice is a supercool event and we were excited to be able to attend this year! Ice Cross Downhill World Championship takes place in only 5 cities around the world. This year, the event drew 115,000 spectators to St. Paul. The racers go head-to-head through a downhill course full of mind-and-body-bending jumps, turns and slides – all against the backdrop of the historic Cathedral of Saint Paul. We stayed to watch the event go from 64 racers to 32 racers to 16 racers to 8 racers to 4 racers to 1 winner! We bundled up, danced to keep warm, and cheered on Team USA!

Celebrating Winter in Minnesota

While Minnesota is cold in the winter, it does offer unique experiences because of that weather. This year, the Winter Ice Castle came back to the Twin Cities. The castle continues to grow over the course of the winter with 50 large ice towers, shimmering archways, tunnels, walls and caverns. Fun experience for the family!

New Year's Eve in Wisconsin

For New Year's weekend, we headed to Wisconsin Dells with our good friends, the Rizzos. We stayed at Wilderness Lodge, where we enjoyed going down the watersides, climbing on the ropes course, playing lazer tag, and potentially waking up our neighbors as we rang in the new year with a pots and pan celebration in the hallway. During the day, we skiied and snowboarded at Cascade Mountain. Mom snowboarded with Presley after a 10 year hiatus. While she did pick it back up, she also accumulated some good bruises (including a softball size welt on her bottom). We ended our trip with a reflection of 2012 and hopes for 2013. Happy New Year!

Christmas Morning

Christmas morning was filled with so many presents. Santa visited again this year and brought treats to all in our stockings. He also brought a special live hamster, named Peanut, for Presley, and a snow cone machine for Canyon (although he was hoping for a snow making machine). We were blessed with many special gifts from friends and family, including the historic Hostess treats from the recently bankrupt iconic company. Merry Christmas to all!

Christmas Traditions

We love our Christmas traditions, which includes wearing our special Christmas shirts from Grandma Harriet. One of our traditions is our pizza making party. This year, we had our pizza making party on December 23rd. Pizza making was fun for both kids and adults! This year our friends Sara and Eric joined us and we ended with a great bonfire outside.









Another tradition is Christmas Eve at church. Annie and Terry were able to join us before their flight out. And Canyon still enjoys sitting in our laps! And the day ends with our traditional Christmas Eve dinner. Unfortunately, the Abbeys were out sick this year but we were joined by the Allemans (one of Cristina's buddy families).