Snow days & some other stuff.

My kids have gone to school one day out of the last nine days. Not school days mind you, I'm counting weekends here too. So we've all been together almost all day for eight days. Eight. Matt was gone for 5 of those. I'm about all done with winter weather and indoor activities with 4 kids. And I really need to clean the house, something I find all too easy to not get too when everyone is home (procrastinate much?) Anyway.

We finally had some snow here in Mayberry! Yes, they were calling for snow on Tuesday of last week, and school was canceled on Wednesday - even though, to me, the roads looked just fine at 8am! Surely they could have just done early dismissal? I've already told you how that day went in my last post, power outage and all. So we had about 10 inches of snow here, and happily my neighbors arrived around 9:30 am on Thursday morning to clear our driveway off with their snow blowers :) Got to love it when the cavalry arrives! It's a good thing they did, too - apparently once you hit 40 things start to just fall apart, and even just clearing what was left from the snow blowers off the driveway and sidewalk was enough to aggravate the tendinitis in my right shoulder. But enough about me!

Jeff and Rob arrived to dig us out!

I was sad to see my arborvitaes all bent over again for the second year. Last year they didn't really recover, but I shook all the snow off and they seemed to bounce back...

...I was happy to see this hawk - or whatever it is - circling around in the sky while I had the camera out. They have a huge nest in the trees behind our house and I see them every now and then, but this was the perfect opportunity to grab a picture without the leaves on the trees and no sun to get in my eyes...

...and then I noticed all the birds flying around my neighbor's feeder (the one the bear was eating from back in May - I guess he's filling it again, but then, the bears should all be hibernating, no?) and I wondered if I'd see any cardinals - I don't know if that's a cardinal, but it sure has some red to it :)

So we had some snow, and 3 out of 4 kids preferred playing in the snow to being inside. Jason seems to think his snow pants are too big, and therefore he doesn't want to put them on and go out. Sarah, who every day asks me when it will be summer and can we go to the beach, had lots of fun sliding down our small hill and playing with Evie and William.

 

 Speaking of, Evie and William were doing their best to make a super slick sled track, in addition to making a snow man. They'd asked Matt to turn on the hose on Saturday, which he did - I probably would have told them no - and I was under the impression that the hose was frozen. Somehow, though, William managed to fill a saucer up with water, intending to carry it from the faucet, all the way across the yard and up the hill, to slick up their track. I think he spilled more water on himself than actually made it up the hill :)

Oooh! I just noticed he's not wearing gloves - brrrr!

After being outside for a few hours each day, they've all come back in cold and tired, and ready for some luke-warm hot cocoa. I've finally learned to not make it too hot, otherwise it just sits on the kitchen table for hours while they let it 'cool' - and then I dump it out :) Have to say, I'd be happy if this is our only storm this winter, we've finally had enough to play in, but really - I need my kids to go to school. At least more than one day a week. Three days would be good. That's not too much to ask, right?

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So I promise I will show you the bottle caps on Thursday, they really did turn out great! I was intending to do that today, and even took some pictures of the process on Saturday just for that purpose - however, I'm apparently not very good at 'doing' and 'documenting' at the same time, and didn't really have pictures to cover it all, so you'll have to wait :) Thursday! Promise! Assuming my kids go to school this week. Oy.

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I was out running errands Saturday morning alone and was listening to - well - blasting, really - this song on my ipod, and for some reason all I could think about was Evie, and  - well, apparently, I'm one of those people who cries when they here music. Can't help it. Anyway! This song make me think of Evie, she really is one of those people with a brilliant light shining from the inside, crazy as she makes me :) Enjoy.