Winter Carnival 2010

For our non-Minnesotan blog readers, the last two weeks in January in St. Paul there is a Winter Carnival every year. It is aptly nicknamed "The Coolest Celebration on Earth" since it celebrates all things winter in Minnesota. There are a variety of activities planned over the course of the Carnival that include an outdoor golf tournament, polar plunges (jumping into a hole cut into the ice of a frozen lake), ice and snow sculptures, an outdoor ice skating rink set up in downtown St. Paul, hockey tournaments, outdoor road races, parades, fireworks, an ice fishing contest, a snow maze for little kids, and every once in a while they will build a life size ice castle (the last one was in 2003).

My favorite part of the Winter Carnival has always been the Treasure Hunt put on by the St. Paul Pioneer Press newspaper. My first couple of treasure hunts, Brian and I were enthusiastically involved in the hunt. The hunt involves a medallion that is hidden somewhere in a St. Paul park. There are 12 clues written by an anonymous clue writer and each day a new clue is printed in the paper. The longer the hunt continues, the clues will get more specific as to the exact location of the medallion. You may ask why would people search through snow covered parks in sub-zero temperatures to find this thing. Well, if you find it you could win up to $10,000. That's why! Needless to say since having babies, we have not been as avid of hunters, but we still follow the clues each year and try to speculate the whereabouts of the medallion. We fully intend to include the kids in actively going out to search when the time is right. This year our weekend weather during the time the hunt was going on was actually too nasty to take the kids out, but we might have tried some "light" hunting otherwise.

Anyway, Brian along with his Dad and Uncle Mike (who was visiting from Chicago for Alex's Baptism) ended up taking the boys to the State Fairgrounds to go through the snow maze and see the snow sculptures. That same day, was also the Winter Carnival Ice Fishing Contest on White Bear Lake which we could see from Brian's parents' house. So before heading to the snow maze, the boys drove the car out on the frozen lake to check out the ice fishing contest. I don't think the Jacob and Peter "got" that they were driving a car on the lake, otherwise, Jacob might have been freaking out. But nonetheless, there are some pictures below to give the "Southern Folk" an idea of how frozen a lake can be to hold that many cars! To set your minds at ease, the ice is about one and half feet to two feet thick.

Below are the pictures from the boys' day out last weekend!

The Ice Fishing Contest on White Bear Lake


The "parking lot" on the lake for the contest.

Grandpa pretending his car broke down on the lake similar to the many pontoon boat break-downs on the water during the summer.


The boys going through the snow maze.
Jacob said he thought was lost forever and would never get out!
You can see that the adults could see over the walls, but not the kids.

Checking out one of the snow sculptures.
This was a "Where The Wild Things Are" character.

A giant snow mountain to climb and slide down.

The whole snow maze.

Making it out of the maze successfully.

Peter building a snow tower with Uncle Mike.

A Winter Carnival Vulcan caricature board.
The Vulcans are part of the Winter Carnival cast of characters in the legend of the Winter Carnival.