Keeping Busy

Amelia finally went back to school today after a week off. Last week they had completely unnecessary snow days on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. (Monday and Tuesday this week were teacher work days.) We got about 5 inches one night and all the roads were clear by the morning (it was a pretty nasty evening commute though) but somehow the kids still had school canceled for 3 days. It's getting pretty ridiculous. We live in a place that gets snow every year! It is not a rare occurrence. We need to figure out how to deal with it. Now the kids have to go to school on President's Day, which is unfortunate since that was a day that Ben had off.

We definitely weren't stranded at home (which would normally be the case on a legitimate snow day), but we spent most of our time the last week working on house projects and drinking hot chocolate. Ben took Amelia on a daddy/daughter date on Friday morning. They went swimming at the rec center and then got hot chocolate and played board games at the coffee shop down the street. Amelia thought that was pretty cool.

The girls stayed busy with lots of art projects.

Making cornstarch yarn hearts:


Rainbow scratch paper:




These beads are fantastic. The girls spent lots of time creating jewelry and whatever else their imaginations came up with.






Ben and I started another painting project. We're in the midst of redecorating the living room. We're attempting to paint a repeating stencil on one wall. It's either going to be really cool or a total disaster. We managed to get the registration marks up (marked on little pieces of painter's tape):

(Everything takes twice as long with kids climbing on you while you work.)

Now we just need to get the motivation to actually start painting with the stencil. 240 times.