Swimming Trip

From Jan 31-Feb 2, we took a weekend trip up to Minneapolis to enjoy the indoor Water Park of America. This fancy place is across the street (well, freeway) from the Mall of America.

The hotel is attached to the water park, so once we checked in we never had to go outside. (Ok, that's not entirely true. Jeremy braved the cold a couple times to get us take-out and necessities from Walmart. That was very awesome of him.)

We got a great discount on our hotel rooms since Jeremy is a Hormel employee. We also got our waterpark tickets for free, which must be a blessing for paying tithing because we should have been charged like everyone else.

The hotel was so nice! We always enjoy hotels because the boys can explore and mess up everything and it doesn't matter. But we REALLY enjoyed hotel living this trip. We watched lots of TV, ate lots of snacks, giggled and cheered and jumped on beds and, best of all, blasted the heater as high as we wanted! 

Jeremy and Tanner played sumo wrestling on the bed by stuffing their shirts with pillows.

Saturday was the big swimming day. Dallin looked so cute in his swimming diaper. I realized this was going to be his first time in a swimming pool. Turns out, he is a little FISH! He squealed and gasped and giggled and splashed. He kicked his legs and his entire body when we held him in the deep pools. He crawled fearlessly through the shallow ends. He was mesmerized by the bubbling water in the play areas. And he loved splashing and getting water all over him. What a happy little guy!

Ready and excited to swim!

The park was super fun- and WARM. We had to be cautious with Tanner though because he was running a fever and complaining about his ears hurting. We successfully kept his head above water the whole time. (It helps that he hates getting his head wet or being splashed on. He's always been like that--quite different from Dallin). And don't worry, no ear infection came of it.

We played around this playground and enjoyed the fountains. 

We spent two hours exploring the park in the morning, went up to our rooms for naps and lunch, and then enjoyed a few more hours of the park in the afternoon.

The most fun was spent floating down the lazy river. We rode it both in the morning and afternoon, floating through the park over and over and over again. The boys LOVED sitting in the tubes with us. Tanner and Dallin made each other laugh and giggle uncontrollably.

In our double inner tube, we floated along singing songs, playing "I spy" and tickling games, and just watching all the people coming and going. This was one of those amazing moments where I was overwhelmed with joy to be a part of this little Zavoral family. 

On Sunday, we attempted to go to church near our hotel. But the crowded situation with the hotel elevators (and no access to stairs) made it take forever to get out of the place. So we jumped to the next item on our plans, which was Mall of America to see what free fun we could find. Jeremy's coworker took these family shots of us in the Mall of America. We ran into her and her family several times that weekend!

We were very entertained by the Legos at LegoLand and other toys in a bunch of other stores. Then we ate lunch and went home.

It was the perfect weekend trip to brighten our spirits from all this cold!

Here's my favorite picture from the trip. It features Jeremy's new teeth with no more braces, Tanner's T-Rex face, Dallin's adorableness and my new haircut.

Isn't our family so good looking!?! 

Sledding

On Jan 18, we had gotten some fresh snow and the weather jumped up to the 20's, so we decided to try our hand at sledding. There is good hill right in our neighborhood, just 6 houses down, around a bug curve and 5 houses up.

It was so funny watching Tanner try to walk around in the snow.

He had been waiting a long time for it to be warm enough to play outside. He was in heaven.

Jeremy mostly stayed in the car with Dallin because there was lots of wind at the top of the hill, but he and Dallin came with us on a walk through the forest, where the wind was much calmer.

We saw the river, which just looked like more ground covered in snow.

Tanner's footprints next to mine.

Our adventure was short, but fun! The car had an adventure of its own, too. We spent 20 minutes trying to get it unstuck in the snow. If it wasn't for the snowplow truck that came by, we would have abandoned ship and walked home.

Other Zavoral News...

Jeremy FINALLY got his braces off. It only took 3 orthodontists (remember, the first one was a fraud despite Jeremy doing his research with choosing a doctor) 2 years of Invisiline and 2 years of real braces. Ugh.

BEFORE getting them off.

AFTER getting them off.

We eat fresh eggs from the Grush Farm now. Look at all the different colors and sizes!

And here's some fun shots of me with the boys.

Survival Tactics

People are saying that this winter is one of the top 10 worst ever recorded in MN history. And there is no end in sight. To survive, we basically stay home and bunker down during each wind or snow storm. It's hard avoiding cabin fever. This is what we do to survive...

Take pictures with the smart phone

Try every kind of moisturizer we can think of for our cold dry skin, including lubriderm, baby oil, Vaseline and coconut oil. 

Play with pots and pans

Wear sound muffs to stay sane from all the noise.

Play ball in the house. All types of ball- both real and imaginary- in all rooms, but mostly in the basement.

Eat lots of staple foods, like PB & J. Tanner consumes them by eating straight through the middle.

Bake goodies.

Take more pictures on the smart phone

Fill the crib with stuffed animals

Play in the basement. 

Dallin loves the Mickey mouse Clubhouse.

Make window paint bags.

Invade fridge.

Do art projects

After being stuck at home for a stretch of 5 days, I couldn't take it! Even though it was only 2 degrees outside, I packed up the boys and we went to the Spam Museum. So nice to get out of the house. We were the only ones there!

Another snow came soon thereafter.

So we needed more survival tactics. Eat more peanut butter.

Eat snacks in different places throughout the house.

Play farm animals with the children's gate. Jeremy is feeding the "horses" through the fence.

Rejoice when Daddy comes home from work. 

Dallin survives better than the rest of us. Being on earth for only 9 months kinda helps. He doesn't really know what warmth he's missing.

There's plenty of things to keep him busy with exploring, so that's nice.

But even Dallin gets bored and frustrated sometimes with being stuck at home.

Luckily, we've been able to make it to two sessions of Mom Time at a community church and three sessions of story time at the library. I would go every week, but it's not worth it when the windchill makes it -10 or lower or if the streets aren't plowed. 

The library has this learning room that keeps the boys occupied for a long time.