Mardi Gras Northern Wisconsin-Style

Fair warning - this maybe won't resemble Mardi Gras celebrations as they happen in other parts of the country or world, but this is how we celebrated here in town.

First, it just so happened that we served our breakfast guests oatmeal pecan pancakes on a day that is observed by some as Shrove Tuesday.  As I just learned, Shrove comes from the word "shrive" which means to confess.  I also just learned that pancakes are a traditional food for Shrove Tuesday because they use up rich foods such as eggs, milk and sugar. So we were right with the season this morning.

And then this evening we attended a Mardi Gras Wisconsin-Style event at our First Lutheran Church.  The meal served was pretty typical Wisconsin - brats & hot dogs, potato salad, pickles & condiments, bars and cookies. And it was all very tasty.

The room was all decorated with bows and beads and lots of color, but the main reason for the gathering happened after the meal.  It was time for the "Pampered Chef" party and here's the reason why.  Last summer our church took on the challenge of re-shingling the roof.  It's a big roof so it was a big project.  I thought I had a picture from when the guys were working on it last August in all the 95˚ heat and humidity, but I don't so here's how it looked before the project started.

So someone had the idea to have a winter gathering to bring us all together for Mardi Gras, to make us all feel warm and...to have a fundraiser to clear off the books on the roof project.  If you don't know, Pampered Chef parties are kind of like Tupperware parties but for cookware and all kinds of related things.  I had only ever been to one PC party before but I really liked what I bought back then, so with credit cards in hand, we went down and checked it out.   LOTS of cars in the parking lot, LOTS of people buying things, so hopefully it was successful.  

And...I won a prize...something I was going to buy anyway!  Let's flip more pancakes!

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More Swedish - I forgot to mention learning thank you and excuse me yesterday.  And today we added some adverbs - rather, very, quite, a couple important conjunctions - and, but, and a couple good verbs - I think and I speak.

And, even more fun, it was warm enough to take my lessons out on my walk today!  Older Daughter says I'm lucky I have country roads to walk and talk (to myself) on, something not as easily done on busy city streets where she lives!  And all was going good today until my iPod battery died.  Try again tomorrow!

Lake Superior is on the move!

Yesterday we made a quick trip to Duluth and noticed something new near the lakeshore.  The ice is starting to pile up on itself and revealing a beautiful blue, aquamarine color.

I know people visiting the ice caves have seen blue ice in places along the rocky lakeshore, but I don't know if I've ever noticed it just out in the lake like this.  People who know these things say that the ice caves should be good and safe to walk to the caves until the end of March.  Seeing open water out there - I think that dark like out there is open water - tells us that underneath all that ice, the lake currents are very active and we'll have some interesting sights when ALL of the ice starts breaking up.

The media specialist in me had to do a Google search on "blue lake ice" to find out why it looks blue.  And it has to do with the color spectrum and which colors are able to penetrate through the ice crystals.  And I'm NOT a scientist AT ALL so here's one of my sources: http://www.sciences360.com/index.php/blue-ice-12085/

And just because you never know what's going to turn up on a Google search, something I often experienced with unpleasant results as a media specialist with students, one of my queries returned websites showing Lupita Nyong'o's dress from the Academy Awards ceremony last night.  Evidently the color was icy blue!

So, the chairs are waiting.  Come on up.  The weather's fine!
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Swedish update - I can now ask and answer questions regarding whether I can or can't understand Swedish or English.  And I can ask how you are and tell you that I'm just fine or not too bad.  And I can say hello and goodbye.

So for now, heydå!

March-ing on in Swedish!

In the interest of full B&B food disclosure, we had an epic fail at breakfast this morning.  The pecan caramel rolls, which we have made DOZENS of times, were so bad we don't know if even the crows will eat them...and they eat everything!  But, we had enough other items for our guests to eat, and they were very understanding.  We did a little troubleshooting and maybe have figured out where it all went bad.  Now we just need to get back up on the horse, or bicycle, choose your challenge, and try it again sometime.

And there are NO pictures to remind us!

So instead of focusing on the bad, here is my new winter challenge fun that came in the mailbox yesterday - Pimsleur Swedish!

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Doing all of this genealogy and translation work has definitely inspired me.  And now I am connected again to my cousin, originally from Sweden, so there is more inspiration.  I learned about the "Pimsleur Approach" to learning languages from Older Daughter who is currently learning Spanish.  She was impressed with how they teach it and so I thought I would try it.  I was a German teacher for a few years before I became a school media specialist, and it is definitely a different way to teach languages.  But at the end of 30 minutes, the little conversation that was unintelligible at the beginning of the lesson, sounds like old hat at the end!

I was a little apprehensive because with this method you only hear the words spoken on the DVDs without seeing them until well beyond the first 10 lessons that I'm starting with.  I'm very much a visual learner, and I remember back in 5th grade in Bannockburn School when Madame Ivy was trying to teach French to our class.  It wasn't until I could see the words that it all started to make sense to me.  But now along with learning some phrases in the 30 minute session every day, I also have Ingabritt's blog postings to learn how all the words go together and how people talk in everyday situations.

And pretty soon, when/if the weather gets warm, I can connect up my iPod and practice my Swedish out on my walks!

Too fun!

Celebrating March!

I don't remember when I've been so happy to see the first day of March!  But the big question remains, is it coming in like a LION or LAMB?

I don't think anyone cares, as long as it's not February anymore!  But let's analyze:  It's a beautiful sunny day, so on my LION/LAMB continuum that would fall on the LAMB side.  But it's still -7˚ at 10:30am so that's definitely on the opposite LION side.  Maybe I could make a 4-quadrant chart and plot the possibilities.  It could be a beautiful sunny day (like today) and be 40˚ F (not like today), and that would be a LAMB/LAMB winner!  (Maybe not to most people in the world, but 40˚ sounds like a little bit of heaven right now.)  On the other hand it could be -7˚ F. at 10:30am (today) and be a total blizzard outside like last weekend.  Roarrrrrrr! That's a LION/LION day.  So, here's me being thankful for the sun, enjoying our LAMB/LION day and looking to next weekend when the temps will be higher.  Meanwhile, they say we will be setting a record for the coldest winter since 1874-75 with 70 straight days of temps below zero.  Yay us!

So what can we look forward to in March?

• Leann's birthday is on the 11th when she wants to have an indoor picnic & brat/hot dog roast again this year.  Last year we were really optimistic and were planning an outdoor cook-out! But, no.  
• Older Daughter's birthday is on the 23rd, but I'm not sure she's recovered from turning 30.  I'm sure she'll find some fun California place to visit to celebrate.
• March is high school boys' & girls' basketball tournament time in Wisconsin and Minnesota. We're so proud of our school here and feel so fortunate that we still have our school in town, even though it's one of the smallest schools in Wisconsin.  They are always winning awards for their students' achievements, and they have such a dedicated group of teachers, parents and community members supporting them.  The girls' basketball team is undefeated again this year and will be moving on to the next level.  Last year they lost their first game of the whole year in the championship playoffs.  That's pretty good when they have class sizes of around 10 students!  So, playoff games coming up!
• And, finally, by the end of March we should be able to start collecting sap for maple syrup! (IF it warms up enough for the sap to run, IF we can get to the maple trees through all this snow, any other IFs?  I think that's it.)

Here are some pictures from last year:

Down in the "Sugar Bush" where we drill holes in the trees and hang our adapted milk cartons on to catch the drips of sap.

Drip, drip, drip.  Not a better sound on a warm-ish spring day, with some bird sounds added in, too.  It takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup, so that's a LOT of drips!

Then we cook off the sap on this wood cookstove from the old Larson house.  The main job for us here is keeping the firebox filled with wood to keep the fire hot and having a good book to read.  Then we bring it into the house to finish it off and process it.

Nothing better!