Happy New Year from the Cool Kite Festival

We spent New Year's afternoon flying kites in frigid temperatures on Milwaukee's lakefront. We pretty much had to carry Rebekah to the car kicking and yelling that she did not want to go...she wanted to stay in her pjs all day, so we let her wear them under her snow suit. Still less than pleased, she put up a fight but had an awesome time once we got there.

I think it was about 27 degrees when we left our house and about 14 degrees by the time we left the kite festival. It was COLD! I love how the colors in the photos came out so blue ~ I didn't edit any of them, they just came out looking this chilly!


At one point, Rebekah felt the wind catch the kite and tug on the string as she flew it. She called out to Dave fearfully asking him to grab a hold of her. She thought the wind had enough pull to whip her off her feet.






All three girls took a few turns flying the kite and Emma and Rebekah made snow angels in the frozen snow.


It was fun to watch the girls run under the kite as Dave flew it. They looked like they were trying to race it and got so excited when the kite soared super high.
Here the girls are trying their hand at creating ice sculptures.

They're fast learners, huh?! {Just kidding, the penguins were made by people who knew what they were doing, not just simply chipping away huge chunk by huge chunk.}

But a really neat thing that happened ~ while they were working, Emma used the sharp end of a pick to carve her name in one of the blocks. At the end of the day Alyssa was collecting some of the scraps that the carvers didn't need anymore. She insisted we could bring them home to keep {and somehow not allow them to melt, after spending a couple hours in the freezing cold we couldn't even have the heat on in the van on our way home in order to preserve them}. Well, when we got home Emma was inspecting the blocks Alyssa chose to bring back, and sure enough one of them was the very block she had carved her name into. Alyssa didn't even know she had grabbed her sister's ice.

Alyssa liked the hot cocoa in the warming house, Emma just liked the icicles.

I decided I am going to try something new in 2013...I want to try to accumulate 365 ordinary photos this year. Photos that simply describe what we were doing on any given day. It might not be the most exciting thing I've ever tried to do {or post about}, but at the end of the year, I hope some fun memories will be there. I haven't thought it through entirely yet, I guess I thought I would let it figure itself out as I go along, as I know better than to set too many rules about what the pictures should be of, how often to take the photos etc. There may be some days where I have several photos from the same day, then possibly go an entire week without taking any. And that's okay.

Without further ado, Photo 1 of 365:

I love how happy Emma looks as she smiles up at the kite! And how Alyssa is flying the kite in the background while Rebekah watches. Taken January 1, 2013.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!