Minutes before lights out!

We were nearly set to sleep in the igloo, waited til the last minute to put the blankets, and sleeping bags, and kids outside, so everything would be as warm as possible. It was a great success. Check out the frost on the inside of the igloo. So cool!

Igloo Sleepover!!

I have been surprised how shocked people have been at the idea that we were planning to sleep overnight in the igloo, but it was in the plans from the beginning and, well, we did it!!

Like all masterful igloo men we started off the adventure by consuming some required sustenance.

 

My boys and I slept in a doubled up sleeping bag with extra blankets on top.

 

These aren’t just any blankets. Much like the igloo, each of these was made by hand. The red and black one was crocheted by my very own dad! The blue and white one was crocheted by my Aunt Elva, and the other two denim blankets were made by the boys’ Grandma Mary. It seemed rather fitting to include such special handmade items in our handmade igloo, and made me very happy.

 

Our hero Matt, set us all up by laying down a tarp on the ground, and then several packing blankets. On top of that we put our therm-a-rests, and then sleeping bags. Extra blankets were piled up on top for extra warmth, but probably weren’t needed too much.

Chez Christensen!

 

Tryg, Andrew, and Owen ready for a great night. Everyone was really excited. Luckily it was late, and everyone was pretty tired too.

 

We covered the entrance up with a partial blown-up intertube. It kept the majority of the cold wind out, but it still got very cold inside, especially around 5 am or so. As long as you were tucked in it was fine, just don’t leave your head poking out too much.

We had a few water bottles and an incredibly fitting milk carton for late-night potty breaks (if necessary). The two bottles here, were this distance apart. The bottle nearest me was basically touching my sleeping bag and was still all water. The further one (less than a foot away) was solid ice. This might not be surprising to some of you, but pretty awesome to see what a difference a few inches can make when it comes to maintaining a certain temperature.

 

The morning aftermath. Pretty standard look of a camping trip right?

We all stayed in the igloo until 7:30, and then headed in for a wicked breakfast of waffles, bacon and coffee.

Generally speaking the space blanket underneath and the sleeping bags (plus some layers of clothes) were sufficient to keep us very warm. At around 5am, both Matt and I woke up from the decrease in temperature. I think the wind outside had picked up, because it got considerably colder to any exposed skin. I still managed to snooze a little on and off, but that’s not all that different from normal camping for me. The kids were rockstars and slept well. Another epic adventure complete!

 

THE. IGLOO. IS. DONE.

Matt’s post to facebook when we finally finished was tagged with this line. The. Igloo. Is. Done. And then we lit it up.

 

And let the fun pics begin!

 

 

 

Matt and I sitting atop the igloo with my boys. We climbed up, and there wasn’t a single creak, pop or crack with better than 500 lbs sitting on top of it. So strong.

 

 

My boys were out-of-their-minds excited. To be fair, so were Matt and I.

Our heroes. Cheers buddy!

The next day was cold but sunny so we took some more fun pictures.

I’m 6’2″ tall, so you see this isn’t tiny. In fact, I can stand up in the middle with no problem.

Vertical panorama shot, anyone?

After so much work, we definitely had fun with this.

A view of the top of the igloo from the inside.

And a pretty wicked shot of the igloo from the inside as the sun comes shining through.

What an outstanding time we’ve had building this with our boys, not to mention sharing the experience with all of our friends and family (and their friends and family!). The adventure is far from over, with a sleepover planned, and several other fun events.

Thanks for sharing in our experience and, remember, you don’t have to build a 12-foot multi-colored igloo out of ice to share quality time with your children. Just spend time with them and listen to them and play with them. It’s so much fun. I promise.

The final push

It turns out that igloo building starts slow but finishes rather quickly. 

Ring 18 is up!

 

Ring 19! It was sufficiently cold outside and the snow glue was so well-prepared by our artisan snow glue.. maker… people (ok, it’s just Matt and I) that the rings were flying on and everything felt really sturdy almost instantly.

Ring 20. In some ways this was the last ring, as the rest of the blocks got overlapped and jammed in where they fit. It’s amazing how fast it closed up. At the end, Matt was inside the igloo pushing blocks in place and I was sitting on the outside (yes it’s that strong) with my own bag of snow glue suring things up from the outside. Here are two of my favorite pictures.

 

Me looking down on Matt through the final hole in the igloo.

 

And Matt looking up at me. We were just a little bit happy in case you can’t tell.

And then we put in the final brick. A bit anticlimactic as it turns out because the hole was too small for the brick we had, but we got it in eventually. There was lots of cheering, lots of hugging and hi-fiving. Definitely sweet, sweet success.

Owen tours the “in-progress” igloo

While his big brother sweeps newly fallen snow off the outside of the igloo, Owen shows off the current features of the igloo’s interior. “So, this is the igloo!!”

Ring out loud!

“My day’s packed tomorrow.” – Matt.

“Whew, I need to do some actual job work today” – Warren

11:07am text from Matt: “Impossible to stop myself. Another ring installed in 45 min. Inside diameter approximately 6 feet… 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 :)” 

And, yes, there were 10 smiley faces.

 

It’s getting hard to see the progress from ground level, but that’s ring number 16!! I wonder if we could get a bird’s eye view…

 

Yes. Matt’s house has three stories. BOOM.

Inside you can see the stepladder that we now employ to put the blocks on. Was that it for the day? NOPE!

2:18pm text from Matt: “One more ring”

 

That’s 17 rings in all! So exciting to watch it close up!

After I picked up my boys from school we headed over to check things out. We felt like the day’s snowfall needed cleaning off the igloo to let the bricks shine through.

 

Kids won’t do housework you say? Well, maybe you live in the wrong kind of house! They are fighting at the chance to do igloowork. 

A pile of blocks awaits their turn to go on the igloo.

I’m sure we’ll have a lot of great shots of the inside still to come, but here is a pretty awesome one with O.

More to come. Much more!

Igloo Building Party

Today, our heroes hosted one heck of an igloo building party. We’ve gotten so many comments and messages from friends about wanting to see the igloo, we invited as many people as we could think of (sorry if we missed you!) to come and lend a hand!

 

After seeing his big brother do it, Owen was pumped to put in a brick of his own. It’s a good thing he got in on this ring, any higher, and we’d need a step ladder for him to reach!

 

Kids that showed up got to make their very own brick by filling it with water and a color of their choosing. They also get to crawl inside the igloo, walk all around, offer up an inspired “Awesome!” or “Cool!!” And then top it off with some hot chocolate and a cookie. (Unfortunately, our heroes didn’t take any pictures of all this awesomeness… but we’ve had lot of fb friends posting their own pictures!)

Matt and I had an absolute blast seeing all those faces light up, and not just the kids. I don’t think there was a single adult that wasn’t smiling and laughing. I wish I had pictures of everyone, unfortunately with the extreme cold, exposing your skin to the air was quite dangerous. Temps were below zero all day and the wind was pretty stiff.

Fortunately, it was great igloo building weather, and we got some work done!

13 Rings! This is Matt, pushing bricks inside the igloo for building. For rows 11 and up, we’ve been building exclusively from the inside, so after ripping off cartons, the blocks need to get deposited inside the igloo.

 

There she is in the sun.

Ya know what’s fun to do while you assemble the 14th ring of multi-colored ice blocks onto your backyard igloo? Climb up on the entryway to demonstrate how strong it is…

 

And then jump off it…

No igloo jumpers were hurt during the making of these photos. Can’t wait to stand on the roof…

Backside view of the 14th ring.

And then we did 15.

 

It’s really coming together, isn’t it? After keeping the slope fairly constant over the previous 5 rings, we placed these last few in at a sharper angle. It’s made a big difference, and it seems like the number of blocks we use per ring is going to drop off considerably.

Although reaching the top of the igloo is becoming problematic, we’re going to need stepstools soon, and who knows how far we go… ladders… dare i say… scaffolding?!?

Seriously, this has been so much fun. Can’t wait to finish this bad boy off!

 

Oh, did I mention we were on the news?

Oh, did I mention we were on the news?

Ring-a-ling!

We put on ring #12 on Friday afternoon. We really feel like we’ve got the snow glue down pat. Fill a big tub with dry snow, dump in 2-3 gallons of water, mix it up with a 4-prong hard rake like it’s a potato masher. #lefsemaking

After a nice snowfall, we decided the igloo needed some sweeping off (gotta let them colors shine!).

And then, we realized we were going to be running short of bricks sometime in the next 5 rings, so we decided to fill 200 more cartons. We’re moving back to the gel from the liquid food coloring (yes, we use food coloring to color the blocks). We had some bad experiences with blocks not freezing with the liquid dye (especially that dang yellow!)

On Sunday, Matt threw a baby shower for one of our best buddies, and several families got to check it out. It’s always fun to see people inside it as the walls get ever higher!

Stay tuned to pictures for pictures from today’s igloo party, we easily had over 50 adults and kids show up. Tons of fun, and we MIGHT have put a few more rings on…

And the rings go on…

With our huge pile of milk cartons always at the ready and temps near 0*F, the only reason to stop putting on blocks is to give our hands a chance to warm-up, and, ya know, to do our actual jobs and stuff.

 

Matt put on the 10th ring yesterday afternoon, just as I was publishing the blog post about the previous few days. The entrance was SOO close to be finished!! We got really excited, and I ran back to his place so we could finish it off.

 

DONE!! This went a lot easier than we anticipated. We essentially placed the final two bricks on the top, and packed them all around with snow glue. No problems at all. 

… and that’s the 10th ring and the entrance complete!

The 11th ring went on this morning.

These are the remaining cartons from the 500 that froze. We’re probably going to be filling some more later today, but plan to leave 100 or so to fill at our party on Monday.

 

 

Number 12 is going on this afternoon!