Angry Bird

You might guess what this mystery photo is, but you won’t guess how it was made:

The challenge with this photo is where was it taken:

 

We had a quick but nice trip to Montana for xmas.    Mom’s village was as pretty as ever:

With hundreds of interesting characters, like these ice fishermen:

We shared buns with puns (insider joke):

And videos of Nick fishing in a toilet (rescuing his iPhone from deep in the trap with string, hook, and a monster magnet):

Mikaylie earned position of top puzzle solver:

And Zach and Mike as top Grandpa-wool-tie wearers:

And many chessmen fought brave battles:

We drove back home just before a big snowstorm hit.    We woke up the next morning to find our crazy-deck-chair-perching fly-into-the-window-every-minute bird was back:

So we recruited the gorilla to scare-gorilla him away again:

But this time it did not make him a scared bird, it made him an angry bird:

And he continued fighting with his clone in the window.   So then we recruited a canary and an owl.     Now he is even angrier, but so far has been keeping off the chair:

If that doesn’t work, my next strategy is to hire the squirrel.   He is like the Mob Boss of our back yard.   He owns it and chirps at me continusly if I happen to venture out when he is out on the wire.   In this showdown, there was no question the birds would move:

 

We spent New Years with Noah, Nick, and Chloe.    N&C wedding planning has begun.  Here I am demonstrating how to in-correctly wear Helen’s Sari, not because anyone is going to wear it to their wedding, but because it is fun:

We learned how to throw playing cards with high speed and distance:

If you do it right, you can slice fruit and vegetables.  Lacking those (and the accuracy to hit them), we found various targets in the house:

Here we almost sliced off the top of one of our cacti … learned it has white blood:

The object in that first mystery photo was created using these: 

A bunch of those snow crystals were melted, re-frozen, then re-formed using the tongue from one of these:

Like so:

We had lots of good snow to play in:

 

But unfortunately it was too cold to build into massive snowmen, so Nick went swimming instead:

Later he thoroughly embarrassed  me by beating me in a chess game with his eyes closed (he wore me down):

But I got back at him by thoroughly beating him in a ski race (I wore him down):

And we all managed to have a good time skiing without breaking any major bones:

Nick invented new sport … how high and far can you trampoline bounce cheese off your shirt in a ski-lodge:

And then there was rest:

 

If you haven’t figured out that 2nd mystery photo yet, turn your head sidewise.   Local gorilla hanging off one of our basement rafters.