Snow Week

Because of our big snow this week school has been canceled for four days.  We got the big snow on Sunday morning and church was canceled.  That night the temperature dropped to below zero and stayed low for over 24 hours.  So school was canceled on Monday for the cold temperatures and the snow and now ice layer on the roads.  Tuesday morning it was -4 at school bus time so school was canceled.  Wednesday it was warmer but the roads were still really bad so school was canceled again.  Thursday morning it was snowing again with freezing rain, but Friday (today)we had school again.  No snow and right now its in the 30s.  And the road conditions have improved from what I hear.

And our snow week would have been the first week back at school after Christmas break so it was like having three weeks of Christmas break.  I actually loved it.  I like staying at home and having the kids home, but I know some people were going a little stir crazy.  We had fun though.  Here are some pictures of our adventures.  When it was warm enough the kids played outside in the snow.

 

We practiced reading.  Anna really likes reading Green Eggs and Ham.  See her reading it as a 21 month old HERE.  She was only a couple months older than John in this video.  Hard to believe.  She was a good talker at an early age.  She was about a year younger in the video than Grant is now and probably talked better.

We started some new behavior and job charts this week, so we'll see how they work.  The behavior chart has worked pretty well so far.  Anna is motivated to be able to move her clip up for doing kind deeds.  Here she is making a block tower for John and making him laugh by knocking it over.  He loved it.

I tried to clean out some stuff in our guest room one day and found my old journals.  The kids were very interested in them.  It just happened that I had some blank journals around so I gave Anna and Matthew each one.  Matthew has been pretty conscientious about writing in his.

 Matthew made a lot of origami things.  He got some origami books and paper for Christmas.

They also did some Valentine crafts.

 Anna drew this picture of Jake (and the Never Land Pirates).  See a picture of him HERE.

Then the kids decided to make a whole gallery of Jake and the Never Land Pirates characters.  Matthew drew Captain Hook.

From left to right they drew Izzy, Peter Pan, Smee, Captain Hook, Jake and Skully.  I think they added the Tick Tock Croc later.

 John appropriated this chair.  He could climb in but couldn't climb out.

Anna and Grant pretended to be judges one day.  They also did a lot of pretending that Grant was a dog and Anna was the owner.  You can also see some of our Valentine's Day decorations in the background.

 One day we got out this inflatable bouncy thing we had.  The kids had fun in it for a while.

Eventually Matthew accidentally popped a hole in it with his Harry Potter wand. We tried to patch it with duct tape but it was getting pretty wild by then, so we just deflated the whole thing.  Maybe we'll get a real trampoline someday.

Grant has been our little trouble maker lately.  Maybe I'm not giving him enough attention.  He likes to wrestle with everyone and make messes.  He had been sleeping in a toddler bed but Scott and I were tired of cleaning up the messes he made every night and having him stay up til 11, so we moved him back into the crib and John back into the pack and play.  As a form of protest for being back in the crib he has stripped down to nothing the past few nights and wet on the bed and floor.  We are now using duct tape and safety pins to keep him in his clothes and diaper.  Here's Grant vacuuming up a cereal mess he made on the carpet.  

So Friday morning came and the kids headed off to school for one day before the weekend.  So I guess we are getting back in the swing of things now but it was nice having a snow week.