Snow Day Surprise

 Friday was a surprising snow day, in the sense that the snow was wet and heavy and sort of deep, but not nearly as hard to drive in as the icy nonsense that was around earlier in the week.  As I was already headed to work when I got the cancellation news, I thought donuts were in order, so we could start the day with custard infused carbohydrates topped with chocolate.  This combined with our normal baking activities of snow days and the Valentine's Day candy that was still around led to a day long sugar buzz for all.  We had the banana bread and a batch of chocolate chip cookies all baked before 9 am.  Sophia folded some laundry, her new household chore and Merrick and I made sure the driveway was all shoveled off.  We did build some snow forts in the front yard and the kids tossed ice balls at each other.  There was plenty of wrestling but no tears.  It was a great time of year for snow, beautiful and yet you know that spring is still on the way.

Waste not a Winter Weekend

 It was the kind of weather, that let you know it was still winter, but showed the promise of spring.  The air was cold, the sun had some heat in it.  We are closing in on the changing of the seasons and as exciting as that is, I still found myself pushing the outside to cough up the last of a winter of activities.  Friday night was chill in a different sense.  We grocery shopped to get clear time for fun on Saturday.  Packed ourselves at a Mexican restaurant and then camped out in the living room.  Saturday we were up early for Merrick's soccer.  Sophia skipped the practice this week and decided to stay home and work on homework and her new chore, folding laundry.  She did amazing, and when Merrick and I got home she had baskets loaded and the music bumping in the basement.  Ear to Ear grin of self-pride from a job well done.  A quick lunch and then we headed to the hills with sleds in tow to meet some friends on the snowy slopes.  One of the sleds we took was making its debut, having been a gift to Merrick two years ago.

 The sled reminded us of how little snow we have had in the past two years.  The hill gave up plenty of smiles and emptied our bellies for an evening of pizza and socializing.  Sunday was bright, sunny and clear, but still pretty cool.  We bundled up anyways and headed to a nearby nature area for a marsh hike in the phragmites as well as the some animal track identification in the more open areas of the oak woods. We easily identified deer, mouse and rabbit tracks with a plethora of squirrel trails looking for the last of the past year's acorns in the thinning snow.  We played around on the ice rink for a while, until some hockey players showed up to knock the puck around and ended the morning outing with some snowball fights on a large parking lot plow mark. A little lunch and some recharging back at the house for all.  Merrick and I played some slow bluegrass riffs before we were off to our next outdoor adventure.We headed south in the early afternoon to meet some more friends for some cross country skiing.  The trails proved to be very ice and I crashed more times than I can count, although
 Sophia can likely recall as she was embarrassed at my performance.  She asked how long I had been skiing and I told her I just started this year same as her. 
Her response belied her embarrassment "It shows!"  Four little ones on icy trails means we don't cover much ground.  Actually the adults ended up carrying the littlest ones skis while they found it was easier to walk on the icy trails than ski. It takes a lot of pizza to sustain our outdoor bellies, and we soon headed back to their house for another sustaining dose of pizza.  The kids played doll house and hide-n-seek, before we loaded up and headed north back to the reality of a week of work and school to come. 

Super Weekend

 Super bowl weekend still finds us active although somewhat trapped indoors by the cold.  The kids are noticeably 'cooped up' by a lack of outdoor recess at school and this weekend's weather isn't finding us outside as much as we had planned.  Toyed with the idea of sledding today, but with wind chills around 15 below, I figured getting geared up and 30 minutes on the road for 20 minutes of sledding wasn't worth the effort. Sophia worked on some sewing projects for her dolls and Merrick and I headed to the hardware store to get some PVC glue to fix then hockey net. Friday night we relaxed after what seemed like a long week, but for no particular reason.  The kids worked on homework and we played some edutainment games on the ipads.  One of which, Sushi Monster, is a great math game that Merrick kept hollering "I rock at this."  It was early to bed and early to rise, some minor shopping and then off to Soccer.  twenty five kids on the soccer field was also a lot to handle for the coach, given this was the first chance many of them had to burn off some steam.  We headed south in the afternoon to meet some of our friends for some bowling and homemade pizzas and even some Dancing video games.  The Pizzas were pretty good, bowling with four kids moves at a glacial pace that was fitting for the weather and the dance offs were gut bustingly hilarious.  Merrick has some solid moves that I was totally unaware of and are still impressing me.  I unfortunately was scored very low by the Bulgarian judge, but that happens sometimes.  The kids were able to hike the woods a little and sneak around some low pine plantations for sheds, but I forgot to pack my boots and ended up watching them from the windows.  That too was ok, as it was pretty cool to watch them wandering through the snow covered pines and I could sense that in their minds they were a hundred miles away and traversing the Yukon in search of a Yeti.