Playing Train

The girls have been playing train all day today, which made it a little harder to do laundry:

 The first car in the train is a toy car, the second car is a book car, and then next are the two sleeping cars.  I think it's great that they thought the train needed a book car!  Here they are waving to the people watching the train go by.

Megan is reading Dr. Seuss' ABC book:

Amelia is reading "Kitten, Kittens, Kittens":

And now she's reading Megan's alphabet cook book.  They love reading this cookbook!  We'll have to actually cook something from it sometime. 

More Snow Fun

Amelia even went sledding in our backyard this time!

Our hill is not quite as exciting as Cosette's hill, but with a good push, Amelia could go pretty far.  In fact, she almost ran into the neighbor's house once.  Good thing she likes to fall out of the sled!

Oh, and she convinced Grandpa to pull her up the hill every single time:

Jeff and Amelia built a tiny little  with a huge carrot nose, and Amelia fed her some snow:

Jane even convinced Megan to play outside in the snow.  Megan was very excited about digging a hole in the snow with her little purple shovel.

Then she decided to throw some snowballs at Grandma!   I think she ended up hitting herself in the head with that one snowball instead of hitting Grandma.  :)

 

It's been above freezing for the last three days in a row, so we're down to only an inch or two of snow.  But there's snow in the forecast for both today and tomorrow.  Yippee.  I think we've only had three days of snow-free grass since the middle of December (and there were still piles of snow then).

Happy Birthday to Jeff!

We got to celebrate Jeff's birthday at our house today.  Happy Birthday, Jeff!  He requested pork chops, applesauce, rice and a salad for his birthday dinner, because, as Amelia told him "The birthday boy gets to pick anything he wants to eat."  The girls thought he would like an Oreo cake, and he did.  We got out our trusty birthday hats, and the girls helped him blow out all 8 of his candles:

Grandpa pretended to steal a piece of Amelia's cake.  She was not amused!  She tried to lick the plate clean, so Grandpa helped her get all the crumbs on her fork.  It was a good cake with delicious Oreo frosting.

Jane is currently reading books before bedtime.  I think she is on her seventh book right now, it's "The Berenstain Bears Say Their Prayers".  I recently switched out the books in Megan's bookcase, and so we have been reading a lot of different books lately.  Megan really enjoys "Ten Little Fish" and "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom".  We've been reading a lot of counting and alphabet books lately because Megan chooses them; she's getting better at one to one correspondence in counting, but she still consistently recognizes only the letter M.  Grandma has been a very good sport about reading LOTS of books this visit.

A Fort

We built a fort last night in the playroom, and the girls had a great time playing inside it.  This time, I was told I wasn't allowed to play inside with them, so I finished up a sewing project instead.  They play so nicely together now; I only had to mediate a few arguments, namely Amelia saying "Megan won't give me another triangle bristle block!" (solution: they each got two and I got the remaining one) and Megan saying "I want the pink glow stick instead of the yellow one!" (solution: you get what you get and you don't fuss a bit).  First they built things with bristle blocks, and then they read books.

It is very hard to take photos of kids in forts in the basement in the evening in the middle of winter. 

I think I did a very nice job building the fort, though, using the ceiling rings from the stuffed animal stacker and the canopy, the bunting hooks, and ropes to tie the other corners to the bookcases.  It is both sturdy and interesting!  Thanks for the fort building kit, Becky!

Wintertime Walk

When we got home from preschool yesterday, it was positively warm outside - for Wisconsin in February, that is!  A balmy 41 degrees, with a windchill of 30.  So we put on our coats, and hats, and gloves, and snow boots (or cowgirl boots) and went for a walk.  You can see how excited the girls were to run around outside:

They clamored to go "the sneaky back way!" so that's what we did, even though we had to tromp through the snow.   At least we didn't have to worry about poison ivy....

 Walking sticks are very helpful for navigating the snow:

When we came out at the end of our dead-end street, Amelia scaled the "mountain" of snow:

Then they used their walking sticks to collapse the ice ledges that were formed by the melting ice.  Megan looks a little fierce!

And Amelia had to sit down because her "boots feel funny".  Turns out they were full of snow!

When I asked them what they liked the best about our walk, Amelia said seeing a bird's nest, and Megan said seeing deer poop.  She is definitely in the potty humor stage.

Today was back to normal, February weather-wise: a delightful 12 degrees, with a windchill of -16 degrees, and blowing snow in the morning.  Our just de-iced streets and sidewalks are now covered in a sheet of ice again.  Lovely.