Snow Days

AKA: Snowpocalypse 2014

The snow started falling on Thursday afternoon. School was released an hour early that day and cancelled on Friday as the snow continued to fall...and fall...and fall. By Friday evening we had about 4 or 5 inches. By Saturday another couple inches on top of that and then added a layer of freezing rain on top of all the snow. Luckily the layer of ice wasn't as thick as they were expecting (or as thick as it was in 2008 when we had a similar storm around Christmas time). The slow thaw started today (Sunday) but although some snow has melted and major streets are passable there is still so much snow (turning now into slush) that it hasn't all melted and now the forecast is for more freezing rain starting around 4 am, so school has already been cancelled for tomorrow.

It's been a fun few days in the deep snow, though! Each morning we went for a walk down to Starbucks and Thriftway. Friday was absolutely freezing - I don't think it made it above 20 degrees and with the wind chill it was in the single digits. It's been slowly warming up since then and today's high temperature of 34 degrees felt almost warm! We bundled up in many layers and wrapped scarves around our faces to keep the brutal wind off us on Friday, but by today we even walked farther to the park and Henry played on the play structure and Nora spent some time in the swing. But by far the most fun was had sledding down the street in front of our house.

Luckily one of our neighbors let us borrow their sled and both Henry and Nora had a blast sledding down the hill. Henry went on lots of runs and was super excited to share his fun with Nora. By today, when it was actually warm enough to spend more time outside, the snow was too slushy to sled.

We also had lots of fun playing in the snow in the backyard - complete with snowball fights of course. We had blizzard conditions much of the time with the wind absolutely whipping and the snow falling so hard so it was difficult to spend very much time outside (especially for Nora), but we made the most of it. Nora seemed to like it but not be overly excited. As usual, she just wants to be doing whatever her big brother is doing, so she was happy to be near him no matter what else was going on. Thankfully, Henry's old snowsuit fit her perfectly so she was able to stay warm and dry in the miserable conditions.

By today (day 4) we were all going a bit crazy with cabin fever and trying to keep the kids occupied has been getting harder and harder. Thank goodness for Pinterest where I got the idea for this fun project with baking soda and colored vinegar...

Basically they just drop colored vinegar into a pan of baking soda and watch the colorful fizzing. That kept them busy for awhile! We also made paddles out of paper plates and popsicle sticks and played tennis with a balloon. I expect we'll do more of that tomorrow as it was a big hit. I'll be up searching for more ideas tonight. It's extra tricky to figure out activities because not only do they have to appeal to both ages but we have to have the supplies on hand as driving anywhere is obviously out of the question. Here's a video of the baking soda/vinegar project as well as a couple sledding runs. If you listen carefully to Nora during the art project, she says "spicy" twice - she was tasting the baking soda and saying it was "spicy." I think she just means it's yucky - but I always tell her not to eat my salsa because it's spicy and I make a yucky face. The first sledding run is Henry by himself and it gives you a good idea of just how FAR he was able to sled. Fun!!