Digging out...

It's a beautiful morning in our neck of the woods. Some people in this household have been dreaming of a White Christmas and it appears that their dreams have come true!! Of course, having a Winter Wonderland suddenly dump down in your yard does not come without sacrifice.

Today is digging out day. Around here the snow never lasts very long, so we often skip the digging out part. We know that if you hang tight for 24 hours all will be clear. Not this time. Temps are supposed to stay in the 30's and while the sun will diminish the fluffy stuff, I don't think it will be able to clear it all out by Friday.

Here they are getting the job done.
Notice Princess K doing her part supervising the whole deal.

Good thing she has her leggings, jeans and snow pants on!

While they were working....


.... I began my part of the deal.

Eggs, Sausage Gravy with Biscuits, Home Fries, Hot Chocolate, and Mocha Frappucinos.
I'll toss in some fruit and call it good.

For those that saw the earlier back table pictures, here is the current photo...


Frosty Seats, anyone?



Above: just a random shot from the back door.

Below: We dug a little path for the dog yesterday. Needs to be done again.

Poor dog does not like dragging his belly in this stuff.

Plans for the day...

Eat that yummy breakfast, clean that messy kitchen and

WRAP, WRAP, WRAP!

(wish me luck... I am not fond of that particular task)

Still falling....

That was then....

and

this is NOW.

I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas....

A little dusting and...

...still counting!!

Ho Ho Ho....

Every year since K was around 5, she has set up a Santa's Sleigh scene and plopped herself right in the Santa seat. The first time I was in the kitchen and I knew she playing in the next room. Suddenly, I heard HO HO HO in as deep a voice as a little girl can manage. Chuckling to myself, I popped my head into the room to see my little Santa and was surprised to find her with her "reindeer".

Yes, her two little reindeer with their kleenex antlers were whizzing her around the world. Her red cooler was packed, as any Santa bag would be, with little toys.

A few things have changed over the years...

She's developed her very own white beard...although it was dripping after a few minutes.

This year she had a pillow belly and a sidekick.

He started out as a puppy in Santa's sack and ended the morning as....

....an elf helping Santa check the list.

The reindeer not only have new stick antlers,

there are more of them!

However, even with the differences over the years some things will never change...

The room is filled with laughter and a DEEP

HO HO HO, MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

the many faces....

Last week my nephew was spending a day with us while his mom worked. K was trying to get some school done, yet still help keep A entertained. He's all of 4 years old now. What's funny is that he has an incredible imagination. Sure, K has quite an imagination and you've all seen some of that here on this blog. However, A likes to pretend that he is someone or something else. While he is at it, he goes ahead and assigns a character to you and anyone else in the house. Since he was at my house, he didn't have his box of dress-ups or props to swap on and off to at least give you a clue as to just WHO he was. This made it slightly confusing as it was a multi-character day for this young man. So, after lunch while he was just chilling on the bar stool I got a sudden flash of pure genius. (yeah, I get those once in a while!) I kept calling out the cast of characters he had been and he would strike a pose for me. Now I can just refer to this handy dandy list to help keep track, cuz it really irritates him when I call him the wrong thing!! Hehe...and we all know that I would never do that on purpose! (wink, wink)

So, here are the many faces of A.

See if you can spot the differences.

He's a King.

He's a Spy.




He's a Werewolf.




He's Spiderman.

He does take his characters quite seriously and perhaps you can see why it got confusing!

However, he did keep himself occupied and that was a good thing.

A magical place....

Far, far away in a distant land tucked deep in a little girl's mind there is a happy place. A place where little animals gather to play. There are no worries about winding up as someone's dinner that night. There are no competitions about who is bigger, stronger or more fierce. All that matters is the fun time spent together enjoying each other's company.

This magical land is full of surprises and has everything a little animal would possibly need to make a grand day.

There are safe play areas with swings, bridges and slides.

AND...

...there is a special homemade fort which was carefully crafted with love.

This is where dogs and cats love to spend time looking over the vast land. They wouldn't dream of fighting or teasing, instead they bring their flashlights and tropical drinks served in coconut shells just in case they decide to stay a while.

On the other side of this magical land there is a pretty pink and purple puppy palace. (how's that for alliteration?) Here the puppies are treated as if they are royalty and in this land perhaps they are indeed royalty. They have plenty of food, fun and cozy quarters. Now sometimes, they like to go visit the play area to see the other critters. Unfortunately, this is a quite a distance for such a little puppy and if they traveled it on foot they would be quite worn out by the time they arrived. That would mean having to take a nap as soon as they made it to the playground and that just won't do!!

So, they beckon the Royal Elephants to carry them across the great land.

Wait a minute!!! Royal HAIRY Elephants???

Hmmm, looks like Jimmy has gotten roped into yet another magical fantasy game.

He's such a good sport.....

...and doesn't he have just the cutest little lips!?

Mr. Worm.....

K does have a lot of schoolbooks. Fortunately for her, we don't go through every single one every single day. However, yesterday for some reason quite a few of them wound up in the kitchen. We had my 4 year old nephew over, so we brought our work to the kitchen to keep him company and to try and squeeze in a little learning for K. Here she is hard at work.

She's working on a lesson from her art book. Every time we work on art I have to hear how she doesn't like it. She loves drawing, she loves crafts, she loves colors....she just doesn't love having to do something a certain way or having to practice it. Fortunately for her, (she certainly IS quite fortunate!) this book has short easy lessons and yesterday's lesson had a fun little exercise. K has actually repeated this exercise for fun today. I love when that happens.



Here's Mr. Worm from yesterday. I think he's rather cute.

edible projects are the best...

This week we've been learning about early civilizations. Yesterday, we covered how they wrote using cuneiform. The suggested activity for today was to practice with little "tablets" made of sugar cookie dough.
I'm not one to let a fun project go, especially one involving cooking!

So, today we looked online at quite a bit of information. We copied some symbols and then set off for the kitchen to have some fun.

K colored her work in with food coloring. I read earlier notes from quite a few people that their kids were disappointed to see their work had disappeared once the cookie had baked. I figured at least the food coloring would leave some sort of visual behind.



My nephew was here and did a few cookies, too...with everything but cuneiform characters.

This project was easy and fun, but hands down, the best part

was eating the work!!

a curious little find...

The other day, Halloween as a matter of fact, K walked out the back door. I'm not sure what she was doing, but I do know she discovered a very interesting specimen. She quickly ran inside to tell everyone that they just had to come see this spider with an orange pumpkin on it's back. I told her it was a spider in his costume for the night. Yea, she believed that one.....not! So, we all had to go outside and look. It really was quite a sight....a little squirm inducing for a few minutes, but my curiosity won over. I stayed outside and took pictures, while K and her brother looked it up online. We now know quite a bit about our little friend. She is allowed to stay, as long as she obeys the boundaries. Her place is outside....thankyouverymuch!

Can you imagine finding this in your bedroom one night???

Meet our friend, Araneus marmoreus AKA Marbled Orbweaver.

(again...the term friend hinges on her obedience to stay in her space and avoid my space....guess, that doesn't make me much of a friend, huh??)

my little flower...

Here's my little flower....

and with her friend, the bumblebee.

Pumpkin Carving Night...

Earlier this week we had our big pumpkin carving night. K was beyond excited about it and was extra helpful clearing up after dinner. Then she quickly assembled the necessities required to make the evening a smooth event.

First step was laying out her plastic map to help the pumpkin gut clean-up go quickly.

Then the carving tools were carefully laid out.
(looks like an operating room)

Patterns were picked.


The victims (um, pumpkins) were gathered.



Holes were cut...



and guts were picked through.

We toast the seeds. :)

This one was scraped clean.

After a little (LOT) poking and sawing,
here are our finished Jack O'Lanterns.

Out front this evening....