We had our first snow day of the year today, the school year and the calendar year. The forecast was predicting sleet and freezing rain, but it ended up being just a lovely snowfall. Several feet, I think, but who’s counting. It ended around lunch time and Alan said the roads were fine on the way home.
This afternoon Lex and I undertook the task of cleaning out Alan’s unused desk (with his permission, of course!) and turning it into a Lego center. We have talked about it for a few days and today, Lex decided, was the day.
Guess who gets to deal with this mess?
Eve came down from quiet time just in time to help with the cleaning. It was pretty dusty in there.
I know you are all waiting with baited breath to hear how my children reacted to the massive book purge I did the other night. Did they wake up in a panic, sensing their books were missing? Did they beg and cry and plead for their old books back? NOPE! Their shelves are still plenty full and both kids are happily rediscovering books that have been “lost for ever and ever!” Eve has been doing more “reading” to herself and her animals lately. On one shelf I grouped Lex’s series books together. The next day I started to tell him about it but before I could get it out he said, “I know, just like at the library,” and he put the book he was done reading BACK IN ORDER! Alan later joked that if we got him a labeler the books would all get Dewey decimal system stickers on them! :) Neither of them has even commented on the missing books. I’m not sure if that means they haven’t noticed or just don’t care. They’re both enjoying the “breathing space” surrounding their books now. I’m so happy I did it!
Eve and I went a little crazy at the grocery store yesterday and came home with way too many bananas! “They are so little and cute!” she said. “They are only $.49/lb,” I said. So there you have it.
This morning we decided to cut them up and freeze them, dipping some in a chocolatey peanut butter mixture first. Pop them all in the freezer and a few hours later you have a delicious sweet treat. Yum!!
To balance that, we also cut up a bunch of kale and made kale chips. Eve says they are just ok but I suspect the entire bunch of kale will be in my stomach by the end of today! Could be worse. :-)
Tonight I casually started purging our kid book collection and ended up spending over two hours on it!! Once you get started you can’t stop or else the kids will get up in the morning and put all the nicely divided piles back on the shelf :) While Eve was in the tub I went through the bookshelf in their room. She got out of the tub and asked me “Who is stacking books?” I told her I was just putting some books “away for awhile.” She fussed, but then when she went looking for a bedtime book she got super excited about finding Madeline. “Look Mommy! Madeline! Oh I’m so happy! We have been missing Madeline for so long, where did you find this book?!?” On the shelf, silly girl. It was nice, immediate, validation that purging the bookshelves is the right thing to do.
I now have two large bags of books to quietly bring to the library, two more bags that the library probably won’t take but hopefully someone on Freecycle will, and one large bag that I’ll need to quietly put into the recycling pile.
I hope the kids wake up and marvel at their spacious, beautiful bookshelves and don’t ask where all the old, junky books went! :)
Lex got this construction set called Crazy Action Contraptions for Christmas. It’s like Lego Technics, I think, but has instructions for a bunch of different contraptions you can build using the included pieces. He love sit! He has built all of them several times. The include things like a zip line, a “Tennessee Time Killer,” several different zip cars, and this crazy doodler thing (I forget the exact name of it.)
Totally useless contraptions, but he’s having a great time with them!
I have been trying to come up with a clever caption for this photo all day, but nothing quite right comes to mind. I wanted to post it anyway though, because it's silly. Eve has me seriously beat in the abs deparment! :)
Around 1:30pm this afternoon it was sunny and almost 37° outside. Not the norm for January around here! I suggested a walk to the playground and they LOVED the idea. However, they were both still in pjs, and it turns out they hadn’t had lunch (I was at the gym at lunch time and they told Alan they weren’t hungry), and Eve was working on cleaning up a monster sized mess in her room… so it was 3:15 before we finally got on the road!! A might chillier and darker by then! During that time one of Eve’s classmates had called (her mom, really) and agreed to meet us at the playground so there was no turning back on the plan.
We walked to the playground and discovered they had flooded and frozen the field to create a skating rink! It was pretty bare-bones, lots of breaks and cracks, grass poking through in parts, but impressive nonetheless considering the weather we’ve been having lately. The kids were thrilled and “skated” for awhile.
Eve, "skating" on the ice
I brought the RC car along too.
Did you know owls can sneaker skate?
The car didn't work so well on the ice.
There were lots of leaves frozen under the ice.
I don't know how many times I had to tell those crazy kids not to lay down on the ice!
About 20 minutes later we were all freezing and about to head home when Eve’s friend finally showed up. So we stayed for another hour. It was sooooo cold! We made it half way home before we broke down and called Alan to come rescue us! :) Our hero rushed out in his slippers to save his freezing family (and he did a decent job of not laughing at me for the crazy idea in the first place!)
Warm at home we enjoyed homemade (this morning) Cran-Raspberry White Chocolate Scones (thank you KAF!) and warm beverages. Then some family game time and off to bed. Overall a very nice day! :)
Eve and I have been talking about painting her nails in an effort to help her remember not to chew on her fingers. It’s an experiment. This morning seemed like a good time and she was super excited. I dug out some dark polish (so she would notice it before sticking her fingers in her mouth!) and a sparkly top coat and she was an excellent customer!
After I dropped her off at school I went to CVS and bought some nail polish remover, as well as some pink and purple nail polish. I figured polish that wasn’t 10 years old might go on more smoothly and look nicer! I’ll let you know if this little experiment works. :)
I put the “Milestones” tag on it. Does your first manicure count as a milestone?
EVENING UPDATE: She came home from school with the polish about three quarters off already. She said she picked it off, which is conceivable considering the age of the nail polish and the sparkly top coat. However I found her with her fingers in her mouth many times this evening, so we put the new nial polish remover to good use and we’ll try again another day.
