Illinois's First Mountain Range!

What do you get when you put together: 1 fresh snowfall of great packing snow + 1 morning with no pressing time commitments + 2 girls itching to build something really cool? Answer: Snow cones?

 

Valerie and I have been wanting to build something (reliving the good old days) for the past two years, but we never had the "perfect snow". We also discovered that it is hard to build giant forts and such without the boys. (Good packing snow is heavy!) So we did our own thing. It took about two hours to make 22 cones and we were too tired to do the other side of the driveway. ("Tomorrow", we said.) Of course the next day it was colder and the snow was horrible for packing!

Ice Rink! (pictures and video)

It's here! After many hours of cold, hard work, our backyard ice rink is up and functional! We are having lots of fun, especially Valerie, Stephanie, and I. We three have used it almost every day. It's 35 x 45 sq. ft. We thought it was funny to tell people that we used buckets to fill it, but actually we used hoses. (More than one because our back faucet stopped working for some reason.) We were very careful to not let water freeze in them.

Chris putting some water in the rink.


A couple kids out on the ice. Closer zoom-up from the same day.










It's great having our own private rink. You can do anything from "change direction whenever you want" to, what else, square dance! :) (Sorry for anyone who can't watch the below video... it's not too amazing :P)

Pictures of our snow creations

As much as I like snow, this -28 F with wind chill weather is too much for me. It sure makes me thankful for a warm house and clothing! Here are some pictures of past creations from the last two years, in chronological order.

Our first major work and masterpiece: the Keep









Stephanie and Snow White (who, though you can't tell in this picture, has a spiked mohawk) on the spiral pedestal.

Me, Stephanie, and Valerie with the arch. The arch after some melting (it was April).










David on top of the mountain.


This year we started on a new one (not telling what it is in case it doesn't work out :P ) but the snow hasn't been real good for packing so we haven't gotten that far. Sorry, still no ice rink picture. I keep forgetting to take one during the day, and right now it's kind of hard to see with all the snow on it anyway.