Fabulous Fun (Freakin' Cold) Field Trip Friday





We reserve Fridays for "not-in-our-curriculum-plan" activities...and one of them is field trips.  We had plans to visit the Plymouth Ice Festival with some friends from our beloved Mom's club.  And then the day dawned--frozen.  Temps of 10º when we started out, with a promised high of 15º later in the day.  Seeing that our children were all 5 and under--in fact, all but my children were 2 and under--a few of our friends questioned the intelligence of moving forward with our plans.  My response?  "Pfft!  Don't be wimps!  15º during a Michigan January is balmy!  We'll bundle the kids up and they'll be fine!  They won't even notice!" 

Upon arriving to the festival, and spending a solid 10 minutes applying snow gear to my children in the back of our van, it did not take long for Mother Nature to cheerfully ram those bold words right back down my throat.  We admired some lovely ice sculptures for approximately 4 minutes before the kids all started losing it, despite multiple tiers of protective clothing.  I fully admit to being the first in our small but brave group to say, "Ok, I've had enough...who's ready for lunch?!?"  And off we went to a nearby burger joint. 

We spent a mere 4.82 minutes marveling at the ice sculptures, about 23.92 minutes bundling and then de-bundling our children, and then about an hour and a half in the (nice and warm) restaurant.  It was delightful to relax, enjoy each other's company, and have a (nice and hot) meal while the kids played and enjoyed being out of the house. 

Now for our next mission, I suggest a visit to (nice and non-frigid) Florida.  Who's with me?!?


Wedding Cake ice sculpture

 


Unicorn ice sculpture



All of our would-be human Popsicle offspring
in front of the dinosaur ice sculpture

We saw one team of people working on their sculpture as we were passing by (quickly) to the warming tent

Pennies frozen in the ice sculpture by the bank.  Funny, guys.



Liesl and Ava with their buddy S1. **
(Can you hear them saying, "THANK YOU MOMMY, for letting us come inside!!!!")

S2 and O1--the babies in the group. 

O1 and his parents (and a sibling on the way!)

(*Names altered to protect the children of the pure and naive)