Christmas Week is Here!

The time is here again.  It’s that wonderful time of year that the Allen family gets terribly excited about life.  Only a week to go before we get the biggest present of the year!  The tree is done, the presents are under the tree and the stockings are filled. 

Now I know what you are all thinking.  The Allen’s must LOVE Christmas!  We do.  We love Christmas very much.  What we love more, though, is what Christmas means about what time of year it is.  We all know that it’s only a few days until we can get onto our prized snowmobiles and head out on the frozen lakes and trail system around our cabin.

I’ve now made it a daily ritual to look at my Weather.com application on my IPhone to see if snow if forecast for northern Minnesota.  You see, last year we had more snow than we could imagine.  By Thanksgiving time, snow was a high as our deck railing.  It was crazy, but beautiful!  You know if you’re worried about getting your snowmobile stuck while going through the yard to get to the lake you have enough snow.  Here’s a shot of our deck from last season at this time which shows our chimnea almost covered with snow.

 Now compare that picture with this picture and take one guess what we’re all stressed about in the family?

That’s right…..we need more snow!  And now!  The lake has tremendous ice already, so no worries there, but we need the snow in order for the trail system to be groomed and ready for riding.  We also need more snow on the lake in order to eliminate sleds overheating.  

The snowmobile season is a short one for us anyway.  It usually starts Christmas week and goes through the middle of March.  Some years you might get to ride until the first week of April on the lake, but we typically hope for 8-10 weeks of good riding.  That means we spend the other 42-44 weeks dreaming of snowmobiling.  Pathetic I know.  I think about all the things I could sit around and stress about, and snow is foremost on my mind.  

I can’t speak for anyone else in my family or the many friends I have that also love to snowmobile, but for me the experience is one that I’ve never been able to duplicate with any other activity.  I literally get a euphoric feeling of complete peacefulness when I snowmobile on a trail with snow covered trees.  There are those times when conditions aren’t optimum that it becomes more work to snowmobile, but I’m speaking of those moments when my IPod music is playing one of my favorite songs and I’m riding through a beautiful trail with towering pine trees all around me.   It’s the closest that I’ve ever come to feeling that God is right there with me.  I’ve literally had tears come to my eyes as I ride through these conditions.  Not from pain. It’s from a feeling of thankfulness that I’ve been given the opportunity in my life to have experienced this hobby firsthand.    

My other favorite time to ride is at night.  It’s completely dark except the taillight of my husband’s sled in front of me and the reflectors of the stakes put on the lake to help people from becoming lost at night.  If I’m really lucky, a full moon with provide a beautiful landscape to outline the islands on the lake.  This is an awesome experience!  I love it when we stop for something on the lake like a portage or just to touch base with one another.  It’s completely quiet in the middle of the lake and totally peaceful. 

So….will you please perform your own special snow dance for northern Minnesota on behalf of the Allen family.  We, along with our Lake Vermilion friends, would greatly appreciate every inch of snow we could get between now and March.    

Let it snow, let it snow let it snow.....

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday.  Our family was blessed with having both kids, our 90 year old mother and a very close friend join us at the lake for the weekend.  The food was terrific! The conversations were amazing! And.....playing cards with Darlene was a sobering experience as usual.  That 90 year old is a competitive card player, I tell you.  You think there's no way she can win a hand with all the cards she has in her hand and then she gets that tone and you know it's over.  She's won again!  I only hope when I'm her age I still have the zest for life she has.  Quite an inspiration.....

We also had another visitor over the weekend.  The ice has just formed in our bay, but there are a few holes in the ice just off our shoreline.  A young beaver, called a kit, was working one of the holes.  Although it was interesting to watch the little kit work, we weren't amused with its choice of work locations.  You see our 2 year old griffon would just love to get a hold of the beaver and have her own play time.  The problem is that the ice would most likely not hold our furry friend, so the beaver was keeping Ries from being able to enjoy the cabin yard like normal.

The little guy would pop up on the ice after being under water for a while with a jaw full of lake weeds to nibble on.  Here's a shot of him just as he came out of the hole in the ice.  We tried throwing snowballs at him, clapping loud, etc.  to get him to move along the bay somewhere else, but he was determined to stay in that spot for the day. 

I decided I may as well learn a little bit about the little creature so the DNR web site helped to educate me some on beavers in northern Minnesota.  They grow up to 5' in length and weigh up to 90 pounds.  The majority, however, grow to an average of 30-40 inches in length and 40-50 pounds in weight at adulthood.  They can live up to twelve years and usually mate after their second year.

Beavers live in colonies and those usually consists of the two adults, their 3-4 kits born in the spring and the one year olds not ready to go off on their own.  The kits will swim under water with the adults only after a few hours of being born. 

Beavers can swim up to twenty minutes under water at a time.  Their nose and ear valves shut when submerged.  They also swim under water with their lips closed behind their teeth in order to carry tree limbs to their den.  All of these things allow the beaver to swim under water without drowning.  Amazing how creates the critters out there.

In the fall and winter they feed on weeds and tree limbs submerged under water, so that's what this little guy was doing all yesterday.  Bon Appetite!

This morning I had to get out and take a walk with Ries to enjoy the new snow that fell yesterday.  The trees were absolutely beautiful on our walk.  She loves this weather almost as much as I do I think.  Here's a shot of her romping about on the road by our cabin.  I could tell one truck had been down the road, but otherwise it was me, Ries and nature out there.   Very peaceful! 

About the time that I took this picture we heard a small bird of some kind in the woods.  It sounded like it may have been a grouse.  It sure got her attention.  I could almost read her mind.  "Where's daddy and his gun when I need it?  Grouse for lunch anyone?"

I guess it's that time again.  Time to pack up the truck with all of our gear to head home for another week of hard work so we can come back and play again.  I always feel a sense of sadness on Sundays when I first wake up because I know I'm going to have to say goodbye to the lake and the cabin for another week.  Then I remind myself that I'm lucky enough to have a wonderful place like this to come to each weekend and vacation if I so choose to.  Just the other day I asked my husband, "what do you think our family's life would be like if we didn't have this lake home?"  He, like I, had thought about this question before.  It's really not an answer I can even fathom.  Our entire world seems to revolve around our time up here.  We all four love boating, fishing, snowmobiling, our friends at the lake, our neighbors, the beach, and our fires on the deck.

As we all head back to the city today, drive safe and be sure to give those that you love a hug and tell them how much they mean to you.  Our lake family of friends lost a wonderful man this week to cancer at the age of 52.  He was a gentle soul that lit up the room with his smile always.  Even though he had the same worries as we all did being a father, a husband and a provider, he always smiled as if he had no worries in the world.  As we all celebrated his life last night together, I was reminded about how short life can really be and how much we all can forget sometimes to enjoy those around us that we cherish and forget about all the little things in life that just don't matter in the grand scheme of things.  So be thankful every day, not just on these holiday weekends, for what you have.  Even if it's not what you dream of having, as long as you have your health and loved ones around you, that's what life is truly about.

It's Christmas Morning Again!

So…..I want to take everyone back to the time when they were just a little kid.  You had your pajamas on that had the feet in them….remember?  Take a moment and close your eyes and think back to how it felt when you first woke up on Christmas morning?  That excitement you first felt when the sleepy haze went away and you just knew that Santa Claus had been to your house to bring your favorite toy that you had wished for all year long.  You would hurry down the hall or steps to where your family had the tree.  The whole time your heart was pounding like crazy.  The adrenaline was building within your body due to the excitement.  

Ok…that’s the feeling I had last night.  At 45 years old I realized that I was that excited to see the first snow of the year.  I had that same feeling of adrenaline going through me that I used to have running out to the tree on Christmas morning.  I turned to Randy and said, “do you feel it too?” and he instinctively knew what I was thinking.  He felt it too!  It’s just another reason that we are perfect for one another.   

We stopped in Cloquet, MN for something and I had to taunt the kids with a picture of the snow.  I just couldn’t help it.  I had to gloat!  It didn’t matter that the roads were icy and we had two cars spin out in front of us and go in the ditch.  We didn’t care about the icy roads because it all means that it’s the start to our snowmobile season! 

   

 

We made it to the cabin and there’s just one other member of the Allen Family that likes the snow more than me, Randy, Shelby or Brady.  That’s our dog Ries.  She absolutely loves to play in the snow.  As soon as I lifted the back of the suburban to let her out of her kennel, she knew it was time to play.  She bolted out of the truck and spent the next few minutes running through the snow and rooting with her snout.  It’s the funniest thing in the world when she rears up her head and has snow all over her trimmings on her face.  

 

This morning Randy took Ries on her daily walk.  When we’re home in the cities, she always has to be on a leash.  Up north at the lake, though, she gets to be a dog.  Her walks up here are without a leash and she LOVES it!  Randy can’t even get his first cup of coffee drank before the walk, because she is all up in his grill growling and whimpering to him to hurry up.  In the summertime, the daily walk ends with Ries running into the lake from our small beach area.  This morning she tried the same thing, but got about four feet on the lake (that’s right ON the lake) and realized the water was gone.  She was standing on ice.  She looked back at Randy like, “what the heck happened to the lake dad?”  Hilarious to see!  She turned around and high tailed it off the lake in disgust.  That only lasted a second though as she realized she had snow to play in again.   I’m not sure if I get more enjoyment out of playing in the snow or watching her do it?  Hmmmm….I’ll have to contemplate that one

 

The game plan for our day today is to heat up the garage (we call it the toy shed because it holds all of our snowmobiles).  Randy and I are going to wax our machines and get them all ready for our first snowmobile ride.  Since we have another six weeks or so before we can safely ride the sleds, we have to do something to get rid of the anxious feeling we have right now. 

I have two babies right now.  Everyone knows Ries is the first baby, but my Yamaha Vector is by far my other baby.  She and I are bonded, for sure.  I absolutely love riding that sled.  There’s no other feeling in the world that I’ve ever felt like riding through the woods with snow all around you and the complete feeling of peacefulness I have at that moment.  Sometimes I listen to my IPOD music, but sometimes it’s just nice to have the quiet of the woods to listen to.   

So as I’m waxing my sled today I’m going to be sure to give Randy a big hug and thank him again for his kind gift to me a few years ago.  It’s because of the Vector that I can ride 300 miles in a weekend without any back pain.  I love him for that!  I hope Yamaha will continue to amaze me with new technology over the years so that I can ride into my 80’s!  

Here’s a picture of me with my clean sled just waiting to be ridden this season.

 VROOM….VROOM…..EVERYONE!  Let it snow!