10 Questions About…

Today was our second day of Winter Carnival activities. Last night we took a quick, chilly look at the ice sculptures. Today we headed to the State Fairgrounds to see the snow sculptures. It was about 20 degrees and very sunny. A perfect day!

I have never been to the State Fairgrounds for the Winter Carnival. I believe that the State Fair is actually in Falcon Heights and the Winter Carnival is definitely a St Paul event. But I got over my St Paul bias and we had a great time. Parking at the Fair is very easy, which can be very important on the colder days and isn’t necessarily true for any of the downtown St Paul events. The snow sculptures were very fun. It’s kind of amazing what the sculptors can do with snow. Although we’ve had plenty of snow for practicing this year.

Along with the sculptures, there was a “find the medallion” game for kids. (Aine found 4 medallions, scoring her a toy car.) There was a hot air balloon, grounded. I suspect it was going up at some point but it was fun to see it up close. Kate was sure it would explode; Aine wanted to take a turn going up. There was also a snow maze; unfortunately we couldn’t check it out. Apparently someone has slipped an injured himself pretty seriously and so they were keeping folks out. Even after the injured party was taken out on a stretcher, the maze was closed as they tried to sand down the pathway. We didn’t mind too much as we heard rumor of a big event at 2:47.

Flashback to earlier in the week and Lily told me that some kid in her class said there was a flash mob planned for the Winter Carnival. A flash mob happens when a group of people meet in a public place to do something unusual. We love flash mobs! Fast forward to this morning when I noticed a post on the Winter Carnival Facebook page saying there would be a flash mob at 2:47 today in Rice Park. So after the snow sculptures we booked to Rice Park.

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We got to Rice Park in time to get mini donuts and hang out to wait for the flash mob. The funny thing was that while I think flash mobs are meant to be secret – although in a funny we’re-super-friendly-in-Minnesota way, this felt like the worst kept secret ever. Many of us were hanging by the stage waiting – some for a signal and many of us with cameras. But it was still super fun when it happened – and I got it on video. (Not great, video but it was tough to try to take it all in.) The music started, the dancing followed. One fun part – the music quit working – but the flash mob carried on. In fact, that was maybe the best part!

The 125th Winter Carnival, dubbed the Coolest Celebration on Earth, started on Thursday. For our friends from outside St Paul, the winter carnival always takes place over 10 days starting at the end of January. There are a few highlights, such as the Treasure Medallion. The carnival people hide a medallion and send out two clues a day until someone finds it. Some years we’ve looked for the medallion – this year we didn’t, which is OK because the medallion was found today in Battle Creek Regional Park, which is no where near our neck of the woods so we would have never found it anyways.

There’s also a big mythology around the carnival. You can find the whole story on Wikipedia – but here’s my foggy version that has allowed me to fake it through most conversations over the years. Boreas, King of the Winds, loves and reigns over winter. Vulcanus Rex, the god of Fire, is the sworn enemy of Boreas and strives to bring on the spring. The Winter Carnival brings about the final hurrah for the Boreas folks and on the final day the Vulcans storm the ice castle and spring prevails. In the mix there’s always a bawdy Klondike Kate who sings – and the Vulcan Krewe rides around in a red bus and draws big V’s on the faces of the women in the crowd.

Every year we try to make it to at least one Winter Carnival event. Tonight we headed down to see some of the ice sculptures. Sometimes 23 degrees seems warm; tonight it didn’t. But the ice sculptures are always fun to see and I was a little bit afraid that maybe this would be the warmest day to see them. So after I had a daylong board meeting and the girls had swim practice we bundled up and headed to Rice Park to see the ice sculptures – they aren’t all done yet but we saw a bunch. If the weather is nice, maybe we’ll head out tomorrow too and can watch some of the sculptures in process or we’ll trek to the State Fairgrounds to see the snow sculpture.

So our goal (my goal) for 2011 is to lose any weight I may have gained since our return from Ireland. (No thank you stupid cookies from Lund’s!) I have done some serious walking, weightlifting, Pilates …. and roller skating. Kate and Aine and I went roller skating last weekend.

Aine must have fallen a billion times. Kate didn’t fall – but she did help hold up the edge of the rink. In the words of Aine – I was BRILLIANT. But brilliant includes using the wall to stop. It was fun. Our secondary New Year’s challenge is to become better roller skaters.

(Anyone looking for monthly fitness challenges should check out my friend Suzy’s blog. Last month she challenged folks to do 50 pushups and 25 triceps dips every day. I was one of the successful challengers. This month it’s 30 lunges and 10 roll ups. So far I’m nailing that one too!)

During the break Aine, Kate, Kate’s friend and I took a trip to the Science Museum (We’re members; so every trip is free.) Aine had fun climbing around. We also saw the Omni show all about the Hubble telescope, which is going down as one of my faves.

Did you know that they have used info from the Hubble to figure out how solar systems are formed? It was cool to see the solar systems that were just forming. I must admit that I could only really pick out the ones that had the oval orbiting like ours but it turns out they come in all shapes.

Aine has taken up Irish Dancing this year. I’m sure we’ll have some video to show for the effort this spring when they have their big show – but in the meantime… We went to a Christmas party sponsored by the dance company. Other famous guests – Santa!

We did a lot of our holiday celebrating the week before Christmas this year. It started with our annual Christmas open house. We took no pictures – but we did make a lot of food. As always we left everything until the very last minute – but all of my family is so great about helping. The Saturday before the party the girls and I go to Grandma’s for a marathon cookie bake. Our big lesson this year – don’t try to use healthy peanut butter for cookies. Dad and I went to Sam’s to get good things like shrimp trays. I try to hide one every year – but it never works out. So we share.

We opened presents mid-week. Everyone was very happy with their haul. Presents included a big princess tent, betta fish and Flip Camera.

We went on our annual sojourn to the Children’s Theatre. We saw A Christmas Story. It was a family favorite. Actually it’s always fun to see who likes which plays. Katie’s favorite was Frog and Toad. Patrick liked the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Many of us still go with Wizard of Oz.

The adults had an amazing dinner at Luci’s. Sadly Mom was sick – clearly sick if Luci’s was out. I’m trying to remember what we had – it was a 5 course meal. And if that wasn’t enough we also got an extra dinner of scallops just because we all wanted to try them. If you haven’t eaten at Luci’ you should try it. They have a 3-course meal that you just can’t beat. And much to our delight, there’s a special rate on Thursdays. We had hoped to go earlier in the week but snow helped us decide on Thursday.

One last thing I remember from our whirlwind week was the Mall of America amusement park. Due to a some excessive holiday spending and a bargain they were running we got some very economical free-ride bracelets. The kids had fun. There is a huge difference between the rides that O’Donnell’s think are fun and the rides the Lynch’s like. In fairness they have season passes to Dix Flag so they have been desensitized.