Finally... some snow!

I was reading Amy's blog yesterday and thought it was so funny when she said it finally got cold in Texas.  Her boys were wearing windbreakers.  I guess they've adjusted to Texas temperatures already!  We've had a pretty cold week here; the windchill was below zero all day Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, so the girls had inside recess.  Yesterday, it finally warmed up to 33 degrees, so I sent the girls outside to play after school.  Megan asked if she had to wear her coat.  When I said "Yes, of course!" Amelia responded with, "Well, I took my coat off at recess because it was so warm out, and I was perfectly fine."  That's right, now 33 degrees is "so warm out."  It's supposed to get even colder this weekend; the high on Sunday is supposed to be -4.  Yay.

Anyway, that got me thinking about my kids playing out in the snow.  We've only had two decent snowfalls this winter; the first was on Nathaniel's birthday, where I got the following photos of the girls.  I didn't make Nathaniel go play out in the snow because it was his birthday, and I thought that would be unfair.

We got another decent snow over Christmas break, and the girls immediately went outside to play.  That first morning, I think they were outside for about two hours before they came in saying they were cold.  I asked Nathaniel if he wanted to go out, and he said yes, so I bundled him up and took him out.  Isn't he so cute?

He didn't like the snow at first, and he HATED riding in the sled while I pulled him down the sidewalk.  Sorry for the light in these photos, my camera was set strangely and I didn't notice until I downloaded the photos.

 But I kept him out a little while so that I could help the girls sled down our front walkway.  The girls LOVE sledding this year, and it is so convenient that they can sled in our yard and our neighbors' yards; next time it snows, I should take them to a real sledding hill.  Our front hill isn't that long or that steep, but if conditions are right, the girls have to bail before the sled hits the snowpiles lining the street.

I was just about to take Nathaniel inside when our neighbor came out with her two little girls.  My girls played in the snow with their friend, and I sat Nathaniel in the snow with her almost one-year-old little girl.  And then, I had a brainstorm and I brought out Nathaniel's sand trucks.  What a turnaround in his attitude - he loved the snow when he could pile it in the dump truck or the loader.

Tubing

During Christmas vacation, Amelia's Girls Scout troop took the girls on a field trip to nearby Cascade Mountain to go snow tubing.  They went in the evening to take advantage of the half price tickets, so it was dark the entire time we were there (sorry for the lousy photos).  Since Jeff and Jane were here, we decided to take Megan along, too.  It was really crowded because of the holidays, so we had to wait in long lines to get up the magic carpet to the top of the hill.  Megan really liked the escalator like magic carpet.

The tubing itself was a lot of fun.  Megan was a little nervous each time, but would be smiling and laughing as she got down to the bottom of the hill.  They had workers at the bottom of the hill to pull the inner tubes back and help the little kids get up.  This is Megan at the end of one of her runs:

Amelia made a big chain with some of her friends, she is the second in this chain, although you can barely see anyone:

After that, she joined up with us again, although she never wanted to make an inner tube chain with us, she always wanted to go by herself.

Nathaniel spent some of his time running around outside in his snow gear, with Jane chasing after him, and some of his time inside eating snacks:

We had a lot of fun, and now the girls want to go back again (although we will definitely try to pick a less crowded time.)

Star Wars

Ben and I took Nathaniel to see Star Wars on Tuesday morning while the girls were at school.  The 9:15am showing was surprisingly well attended, but we were able to get seats in the back row with no one sitting directly next to us.  Nathaniel was interested in the previews, but he got a little bored once the movie actually started.  Here is his head blocking my view of the screen:

I had to take him out for about 15 minutes in the middle of the movie so he could run up and down the hallway, but otherwise he did pretty well playing games on my phone and eating blueberries, crackers, a lollipop and some M&Ms.  I'm pretty sure he didn't disturb anybody at all in the theater (unlike the other child there, who had a few loud things to say).  He really liked getting to shake Darth Vader's hand in the lobby.

The bandaid on his chin is from where he ran into the couch and bit his lip on Monday evening.  He cut both the outside of his chin just under his lip and the inside of his mouth pretty badly, it was bleeding profusely.  But I knew from multiple past experiences that there's nothing that needs to be done for cuts inside the mouth, and the chin cut was narrow enough that it probably didn't even need glue.  So I just slapped a bandaid on it, held a cloth on his lip, gave him an ice, and put on an episode of Chuggington.  Hopefully it will heal without too much of a scar.