Winter Carnival Weekend

We did go to St. Paul's Winter Carnival last weekend. We stayed right in downtown St. Paul with a view of the Mississippi river outside our window. This is 19 floors up.



Aren't the steamboats cool?

We were a bit disappointed with the carnival. There wasn't a cool ice palace this year and a lot of the sculptures had been vandalized. It made us a bit depressed looking at these almost beautiful pieces of work.

Here are some of the snow sculptures. They were located at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds. We loved the tee pee one with the native woman inside. The detail was wonderful.




There was a snow castle that we all thought was pretty cool. Although we found out very quickly that when you are working with snow or ice the ground gets really slippery. We all had to walk very carefully.



We thought this guy was pretty cool too.


Right within walking distance of our hotel was Rice Park which had the ice sculptures. Also, the week before, St. Paul hosted the US Figure Skating Championships, hence the skaters in the ice.




I didn't take many pictures of the ice sculptures since they were so broken up. This was the first place winner. See the chunks of ice around it? Those were pieces of the work as it was meant to be.



And here is what it looked like before people took it upon themselves to be destructive. :(
They had photos up of what they looked like right after the artists had finished them. This one had fairies resting on the bed posts. Isn't it beautiful?


So keeping with the ice theme we also went ice skating. They had a rink set up in Rice Park also and it was Kyra's first time ice skating. Yes, that is a travesty that she had never been ice skating before.. and we live in MN, but it just hadn't happened. She was thrilled to do it this weekend.


And meet Speedy Gonzales...


While we were skating and looking at the ice sculptures Alec was enjoying himself with a friend of his. He's always happy to make the trek down to St. Paul/ Minneapolis to see Jakob. He also downloaded some of his favorite Japanese TV shows so he can watch those while we're on the road. Can you tell this one is a comedy?



And it wasn't only coldness and ice...





OK, so we weren't outside.

We were visiting the observatory at Como Park.

This is what it really looked like outside.



Beautiful in that northern whiteness... cold.. way... :)

Saturday night we also visited with my family. My sister and brother both live near St. Paul. We had dinner with my sister, her husband and family and my brother. It was really nice to see them.

It was a good weekend.