Another snow day....how did we keep busy?

It is beginning to feel like the movie ground hogs day. Get up, eat, clean up, kids watch cartoons, entertain them, lunch, more entertaining, craft or something, reading, torture Jordan by making her do homework,go outside, dinner, video, put kids to bed. Over and over again. It's funny because on holidays or Saturdays, even if we don't go anywhere, it doesn't seem so hard to keep everyone occupied. Must just be the thought that we can't go anywhere even if we wanted to.

So here we have today-the snow is falling again and the wind is blowing like crazy. What could we do different? First off, I must mop the sad neglected floor to maybe stop everyone's feet from sticking. I spend an hour on the kitchen and dining rooms. The kids keep themselves busy by watching cartoons, then when the alloted time is up and mom is not quite done..

Play "city bus" on the chairs that mom has moved out of the dining room.
Was actually pretty cute to see them take turns as the bus driver picking people up.
So now we have a clean dining room, let's start a project mommy and Jordan want to do. We shall call it our "love wall"

first you get out the cricut and start cutting hearts and letters out.
such a fun toy
Jordan loves typing in the letters to tell it what to cut
Next step: start taping them to the wall. Meanwhile daddy is in the family room downstairs keeping the boys happy by playing "mario wii" as they call it. Thanks daddy:)
OH dang it,.....one too many backspaces and lost a cute pic...too bad....not going to add it now...oh well.

But Success!! Our finished project. Our "love wall" We started doing the names on the cricut, but then it was taking a very long time so Jordan started writing on the hearts. We have tons more names we want to add, but this is it for now:)


And onto daddy. While he is home, we must all sit on him at the same time.


Here we are in a little "love fest" then later in the day watching Star Wars Empire Strikes Back
And the day wouldn't be complete without at trip out into the snow!

Poor daddy-this has been his life for days now....
Spencer had a blast on a huge mound of snow up at the end of our row of houses.
Jordan loves sticking her face in the snow. They were so funny-the wind didn't even effect them-well Jordan and Spencer anyhow. They thought it was fun to run around the neighborhood and climb on all the snow piles.
Love how the snow freezes to Jordan's hair
Here's Landon before a gigantic gust came and falling down in the snow in his face
And here's Landon after when we came in....
Jordan resisting coming in the house
and finally this is how we found Landon when we came in...that is after searching for him all over-we didn't even see him on the couch-it was the corner by the railing, so we just missed him Poor fella....

Here we go again!!

Here we go again!! Another Blizzard, and this time when I say Blizzard, I really mean it. It started snowing again on Tuesday afternoon, lucky enough after I had already been to WalMart and the grocery store. And boy was that crazy!!

We woke up on Wednesday to some seriously wild winds. It was blowing sideways! Really crazy-then I would look and it would be blowing the other way. The good thing was that it wasn't accumulating as much as the previous storm and our neighbors big truck blocked a lot of wind so not as much blew between his car and ours. Darin shoveled the night before to get a jump on it. It lasted for a while on Wed, then died down in the afternoon. There was lots of drifting as well-from the wind. This was the type of storm I am used to seeing from growing up in Wisconsin. I remember drifting was a huge problem when I was little. You would be driving along and the road would be clear, then out of nowhere there would be a big drift and you would be stuck. That happened here in this storm. They showed pictures of trucks stuck in massive snow drifts. Crazy wind!!

Here are some shots from during the day.
Our lilac tree out back. Really is pretty with the snow on the branches.
cool icycles on the railing out back
I thought it was cool how it stuck to the door.
want to open the door? And this was after I knocked some of the snow off the doorknob
various shots of out back. We have to keep going out to check the drain-if it gets clogged it will flood through the back door-we learned that he hard way a couple years ago. And when this snow melts, uh oh!!

the bottom two pics were taken from the dining room table looking out back.
I wish the pictures could show the wind. It was really blowing so hard.


So another day inside-well, we did venture out later after it died down. More to come on lots of fun stuff we did to keep busy:)

Blizzard Report-Sunday and Monday

Just so we don't forget, there's a ton of snow here!! We know that we wouldn't have church, so another day of being home together. We had a plan as today-more playing, our own "church" service, making valentines and doing Jordan's valentines box, baking, etc.

Darin did go out and do some more shoveling in the afternoon. He worked sooo hard getting the cars out. He would be out there for 3 hours at at time. I felt so bad for him, but so thankful he did it for us. Tons of people were out shoveling away.
After breakfast, we decided to have our church service. Since we will be missing 3 consecutive weeks of church-2 for snow and one for stake conference, the bishop gave the priesthood brethren the ok to administer sacrament at home.

Here is Landon getting ready to have church.
The sacrament was a really special experience for our family. We put a chair in the middle of the living room-the one Landon was sitting on-for Darin to place the bread and water. The kids and I sat in a row on the couch. We had a hymn, prayer then Darin got down to administer the sacrament. Spencer and Landon insisted getting down on the floor with him as he was saying the prayers. Cute, but distracting to Darin as he was trying to do something sacred and ward off little hands from grabbing the bread in the middle of the prayer. The children were good and we felt the spirit. After the sacrament, we had a talk by mommy about the Nephites first sacrament.

On to the Valentines part of the Day. Even though we don't know when the kids will get back to school, we started Jordan's Valentines box and valentines to give to friends. It was fun, but she insisted on using the tissue box and it was hard as heck to ge the paper to stick to the box. I was stubborn and didn't want to use tape, but finally gave in and taped the paper down to the box. Jordan had a blast decorating it.

Later in the day we ventured outside. Darin did more shoveling and I took the kids for a walk. We actually ended up lucking out because when we walked down to see the playground, there were people sledding so the kids all got their first time to go down the hill on a sled!!!! Spencer was in heaven!! He loved it. One family had little discs, but another family had inner tubes and the were great. Spence went over and over again. They didn't even complain about going up and down the hills. We were gone so long so Darin came looking for us. Landon had fun playing on the swings buried in snow and on the playground.

I looked online for tubes and found a ton to order, so I am excited since the snow will be here forever!!

Here we are at the end of the fun time out:) Queen of the mountain-this is in front of our neighbor's house.
One last fun shot-my little helper in the kitchen. He may not like this pic in about 15 years, but still so cute. He insists on wearing an apron if I have mine on, and I did at this time. Funny boy:)

Monday
The weekend is over, but now there's no school and the gov't is closed. All home once again. I spent the morning cleaning while the kids played.

I guess that since the stove was finally clean, Spencer felt like he should play on it. We spent time coloring and doing writing. Figured I should get Jordan started on homework, even though we probably wont' be going to school this whole week.
Spencer's new favorite thing: peanut butter and jelly taco.

I actually don't remember if the above pictures were taken on Monday or Tuesday-I think probably on Tuesday, the days are all running together now:)

Blizzared Report: Saturday

Would you like to open your door to this? Fun stuff but I'll get to that in minute.

Since we could not go out all day, we had to keep ourselves busy as we watched the snow get deeper and deeper and deeper. It was our second day of being home bound, so had to come up with lots to do. Funny how you can stay home all day on a Saturday and not think you are cooped up, but when you can't go out, you feel trapped.

Anyhow here's a few of the happenings:

played in each others bedrooms-Diego, Thomas, princess, barbies, animals
did art work-coloring, cutting, bendarooos
got into ice cream-Landon hid it in the footstool
watched movies on the pull-out sofa
ran around like a bunch of wild banchees

Good morning! This is what we saw Saturday morning when we woke up, and this wasn't even when it was over. Imagine a ton more on top of this!! It is so pretty, though!

Remember the bushes and the little bridge...don't know when we'll see them again. March? Maybe April? Hope they make it!


So after keeping busy all day finally-we ventured out. That is after the snow stopped completely. Darin wanted to open the door and shovel first, but he was not fast enough. The kids were dying to get out so they made their way over the final big mound of snow and down the steps, even though they couldn't see where they were. It shows tons of snow, but I had shoveled a little bit off as the day had gone on so we could get out easier-didn't work too well.

Landon had a really hard time getting out. He couldn't walk anywhere because the snow was so high on him so lasted about 10 minutes-literally. He kept himself busy playing in the front room for the time I was out with the other two. We didn't get too far since you could hardly walk in it and I was stressed out about the kids walking around and knocking snow on the sidewalks the neighbors had already shoveled. The next door neighbor is pretty cool about it since he has a baby now, but the end neighbors are a little uptight.
This pic is out of order but I loved it. Jordan had snow caked to her shirt when we came in and Spencer wanted to eat it. Funny.
Some views of the neighborhood before people were out. The icycles are on the boys window. Scary if one were to fall on you! Some of these were in the morning before it stopped, so there was more at the end of the day. It was sooo beautiful when it was untouched. It is also so quiet when you open the door and no one is out and about. A winter wonderland!Darin kept teasing me about my back, which conveniently started hurting right before the biggest snowstorms here in 100 years, so the doctor told me not to lift anything. I did feel guilty as he spent hours outside everyday shoveling snow and I couldn't help. Darin told me to just sit down in a snowbank and I would have a big icepack. So here I am icing my back. It actually felt good and relieved some pain!
More pics-sorry if they repeat. Soo much snow on the branches...so much snow on everything!!! Oh, this is after it ended...so look how much more the cars are covered than the early morning pictures.

Poor Darin has to do all the shoveling. I think I could do it, my pain has been dull lately, but then I think I would pay for it later. Ahhhhhh. Darin spent 3 hours trying to get the van out, then took a break and did more. He was so tired-poor guy.

More to come about our Sunday fun!

Start of the Blizzard on Friday

The snow started falling about 10:00 am and kept up all day, well into Saturday. It didn't actually start sticking until the evening. This was truly a weatherman's dream come true. "The Big One!!" And boy did they milk it as much as they could!!! The news covered it all day-I mean non stop!!! Really overkill, if you ask me. There wasn't much more they could tell us during the day...yes, it's snowing.

Anyhow the kids were out of school because the county is wimpy. They really could have had a half day at least since it didn't start sticking until late afternoon. Oh well.... This is just growing up in Wisconsin that is talking. When it snows there we don't talk like it is the end of the world....well, I guess you shouldn't compare since this area really isn't equipped to deal with it. I just think of all the people in the area from Africa, India, and South America-this has to be really something for them!

Darin got to come home early, so that was nice. He did a last minute grocery store run for me, which helped so much. My visiting teacher came and cleaned up for me since my back had been hurting. I watched the news about how there are no shovels to be had and people are panicked and the grocery stores are running out of everything.

So here is the view out of our front door at the beginning.

Here's a view of our front yard area. Notice the bushes and little bridge, but it will be gone soon.

We did pretty well keeping busy since it was only the beginning. The kids played really good for most of the morning. The played "doggie camping" going to the "vet," "princess" and lots of other stuff. Toys are scattered all around the house. In the afternoon when I wasn't feeling much pain, we started a little activity I picked up for Spencer. A dinosaur mosaic. It proved to be a bit more complicated than I figured. Spencer started to do a few, but then gave up. It was a fun type of thing to do, but not for a 4 year old! I ended up finishing it by myself.

Here is Jordan's preferred snow day outfit. Why not? We're not heading out anytime soon! This series of pics was just after Jordan informed me that a little boy in her class is taking her on a date...uh oh...what's to come in 10 years? She did all the posing herself....double uh oh!

She is pretty cute, if I do say so myself!

Oh Landon, poor little guy. Mommy was too lazy and sore to try to get you down for a nap, and you have had it. Being told "no" one too many times is just too much to take!

Help me mommy!

Here's Spencer heading out on a trip. Don't know where he is going, but he is ready!

Funny kid!

Here's Landon about 5:30 is-he could not take it any longer. But, it proved to be a bad decision to let him have a nap-he did go to bed but woke up wide awake and wanted books read to him about 3:30 am. I was up with him for about an hour and a half or so, then thanks to his blankie, he finally dozed back off until morning.

The tree out front just before bedtime.

The bushes and bridge are slowly disappearing in a blanket of snow!

Goodnight cars-maybe we'll see you in the morning!

Stay tuned for more!