January or March?

Well, what a beautiful weekend.  I went up to the St Cloud area to visit family.  It should have been our 4th annual boot hockey for all ages tournament.  We had two issues. There had been so little snow and so much wind, that the ice was almost too slippery to stand on without falling over.  The second issue was that there was a lot of open water.  Our host keeps records, and the latest date that the lake has completely iced over was January 9th.  We beat that this year.  
We still ended up having lots of outdoor fun in the beautiful sunshine and 30-40 degree temps!  

The oldest and biggest "kid" in our party is 53 and he organized curling, golf,  soccer, and bean bag toss.  He painted the curling target right on the ice with spray paint and we glided rocks into the target.  I ended up finding that the perfect delivery was like a version of bowling.  I got a running start from a small patch of snow and then swung my rock and set it on the ice as I pushed it forward.  It worked like a charm.  We golfed from the sand and chipped the balls onto a deflated inner tube that was positioned on the ice as the "green".  We all decided that we needed some good cardio exercise, so we chose soccer.  There was no snow on the grass, but because it was frozen, it was slippery and hard.  I can tell you too, that when the ball made contact with skin, it hurt.  We spent hours outside laughing and soaking up the unbelievable January weather.  Right before we began curling, a flock of 10 white trumpeter swans flew in and landed in the open water.  They seemed to be unafraid of us and swam to our end of the open water.  Several were mottled gray and white.  We decided that they were juveniles.  They were every bit as large as the adults.  Only their color distinguished them.  They were incredibly beautiful and quite noisy at times.  
The lake was almost constantly making the most eerie sounds as the ice expanded.  I tried to record it but the family was much too noisy.  It reminded me of hearing whales communicate.  At the same time, it's quite unlike anything else.  What an amazing outdoor weekend!