Finally - a day above freezing!

We had a snow day yesterday, because the weather service had predicted 7 inches of snow total, with 2 inches of snow an hour falling around school pickup time.  As it turned out, we only got 3 inches total, and while there were some heavy snow periods, they were sporadic.  So the snow day turned out to be unnecessary.  The girls didn't get to play in the snow, since the baby refused to nap in his crib all day.  Instead, we made pretzels.

Amelia made the letters A and M, a heart, an octopus, and a girl.  I made a snail, a turtle and a girl.  Megan declined to participate.

Amelia used my camera to take a nice photo of the baby in the Baby Bjorn.  He was cooperative, but I found that it was hard to knead dough while wearing a baby.

In contrast, today was a beautiful winter day!  It got up to 43° and the sun was even out!  As soon as we got home from school, we went outside to play.  I bundled Nathaniel up in his snowsuit and put him out in the snow, since he again refused to sleep in his crib.  He didn't seem to mind the snow at all!  At first, he kept his eyes squinted practically shut, and I realized this was the very first time he'd been outside without having his entire face covered up.  He didn't know quite what to make of the bright sun shining on the snow.  When he got a little fussy, I put him in the stroller in the driveway, and he slept a little while we played.

Megan colored with chalk a little, and made a beautiful letter A, but found it was a little hard to do wearing snow mittens.

The girls especially liked climbing the tall pile of snow by the mailbox.

They tried to help shovel the icy snowy slush at the end of the driveway, but the only tools they could find were garden tools.  Guess we ought to get some kid snow shovels!

Megan had fun splashing in puddles and trying to dig in the big snow piles:

Amelia got cold and went inside when Ben got home; she said she had splashed cold water into her boots and her feet were cold.  But she had been coughing earlier, and ended up having a low fever before bed, so I think she just wasn't feeling well.  Megan and I took a walk through the sneaky back way, since we wanted to stay outside as long as possible.  Megan wanted to walk right across the snow on the prairie, instead of sticking to the sidewalk and then the trail, so we blazed a path across the creek and through the trees and grasses.  I had to walk first because the snow was so deep that Megan couldn't walk unless she followed in my footsteps.  There were times that the snow was higher than my knees and to the tops of Megan's thighs, and let me tell you, that is hard to walk in!  We followed some melted paw prints (I'm guessing a fox) and saw a dead animal (I'm guessing a rabbit).  Other than that, we had a wonderful time exploring, and Megan thought it was great fun to fall over in the deep snow as she was trying to walk.

It is supposed to be 37° tomorrow, so we will try to get outside again before the cold weather comes back.