Here’s the thing about snow days: It’s kind of our normal schedule. We love being home. John works from home, so we usually eat lunch with him. We joke about taking him out for walks like a dog. I hardly ever feel cramped or like the walls are closing in- especially if I have a normal schedule of cleanup. We are not on the go all the time, so as the snow storms started rolling in, I thought we’d be pretty normal around here. Like summer time, without the summer.
Day 1 was pretty good. The kids played Barbie dolls ALL DAY LONG. Love those Barbies! I started some projects and found time to work out.
By the end of Day 2, something threw off my groove. I had to force myself to be focused, I was like a hummingbird going around to 20 things and accomplishing nothing. I drove myself nuts. Poor John had just ordered a bunch of computer parts and none were arriving because even UPS wasn’t on the roads (it was that bad!).
We started to feel like we were in Plato’s cave, interpreting our lives through the shadows from the weather formations through the windows.
Day 3 we pretended to have school and the girls did “centers” and sang songs and peace and sanity was restored and the sun came out and we all held hands and sang kumbaya and I loved my life again.
Day 4 we went visiting teaching, to McDonald’s and played outside. Everyone and their Mom was at Target. But it felt good to see people again, different people than my kids, that is. Also bought a gate- a much needed purchase.
Here’s some of the things I accomplished and we played with this week, in between buzzing around entertaining children.
Hearty Bread for Soups and Sandwiches- multiple rising times give it a sourdough flavor, baking stone and water spritzes give it a crunchy crust. With lentil soup- heaven!
Homemade Oreos, aka Chocolate Wafer cookies from Martha Stewart Baking Handbook. They were crispy and the cream filling is spot on to oreos. So good. The trick is to keep putting the dough in the freezer between steps so it was firm while rolling it out, so you didn’t need more flour or overwork the dough.
We didn’t want OREO on ours though- so we pulled out some letter stamps and wrote out messages instead.
The second day of eating these I realized they could be improved. Enter the peppermint oil into the cream filling. And then Sophia didn’t like them- double score, more for me!
Connectagons- the best toy ever. I can feel my brain expanding as I play with them, and practically see the wheels in my kids head turning. One of our centers during our mock kindergarten.
Leo conquering the stairs. We now have to rearrange our living room to let him play downstairs. He is Speedy Gonzalez.
Magnets- Spaghetti jars, spray painted, with some motivational sayings printed on them.
The Just Do It- when I gave a lesson about scripture reading with your kids, that was a theme that
emerged- just do it! Props to Susan my neighbor for the catch phrase, oh yeah, and Nike.
the back- plastic lids acting as filler so the magnet touches the fridge.
And I finally put magnets on the back of a bunch of vintage cereal ads I laminated years ago. (Don’t you love how some craft projects have a fermentation period? It took me all of an hour to do these magnets, but I waited 2 years to do it.)
Last but not least- another work in progress…
I've started printing Sophia’s scrapbooks so I can bind and pretend like I’m not really 4 and a half years behind on getting the pictures to a file and the printer.
If only I could convince my printer to like me and stop going all 2001: A space odyssey on me and rebelling and having a mind of it’s own….
Hooray for productive snow days! Another post on media in just a moment….
No comments:
Post a Comment