Tuesday morning started out well until Anna complained of a headache about the time we had to leave for school. We have learned after experiences last year that the best way to deal with this is to have Matt take Kate in to school (assuming he's available) and then just let Anna rest for 20-30 minutes to see if she feels better or not. This time she did and was in to school by 8:30. This was our first use of flexibility this week.
The original weather predictions for Tuesday evening here in Southern Wisconsin were for rain and sleet overnight, changing to snow in the morning, with maybe a total accumulation of 2-3 inches.
About the time I posted the last update on this blog on Tuesday night, it started snowing. The snow continued all night, mixed with some freezing rain, and on Wednesday morning ALL the local schools were closed. What a fun surprise! This marked our second use of flexibility for the week.
The kids and I had a fun day, which included all four of us playing outside in the snow for close to an hour.
Kate and Ethan had their snowmen built even before Anna and I got outside.
This was after they tasted fresh snow, of course.
We tried sledding down the hill, but the snow was pretty sticky. Everyone stayed plenty warm, however, by trudging up the hill a few times. Even Anna crawled around to help keep her extremities warm, a huge improvement from the last time she tried to play in the snow.
Once we realized how packable this particular snow was, we decided to make a fort. The kids helped fill buckets and other containers while I stacked them up. We had a nice fort made before we headed in for hot chocolate and then lunch, but the rain/slush mix in the middle of the day destroyed our creation.
Anna opted to do some of her weekly homework when I sent Kate and Ethan back outside. They worked on clearing the driveway. Kate was very tired by the end of the day :)
In between meals and outdoor play time, the kids had a good time playing inside, too. We should have a snow day every Wednesday :) I told Matt at the end of the day that a good indicator of the success of the day was that I had to throw all of our snow gear in the drier twice.
The third use of flexibility this week came on Thursday. Anna woke up feeling tired. In hindsight, we think she overdid it while playing outside on Wednesday, but it's often hard to recognize those reasons in the moment. We didn't realize just how cruddy Anna was feeling, though, until she was sick as we were loading up into the van. Matt was able to get Kate in to school (again) while I stayed home with Anna to get everything cleaned up. After a bit of rest on Anna's part and observation on my part, it was obvious that she wasn't fighting a virus, so we got her in to school by about 10:30. The rest of the day went fine for her.
Friday morning was a Mom and Ethan morning. We got some donuts, went to a thrift store (Ethan loves finding new trucks to buy with his own money), and then went sledding together. It was a good way to get some fresh air and exercise after a few weeks of being indoors a lot.
As I type, the sun is trying so, so hard to peek through the clouds. This is more than we've seen in about two weeks, but it's something, so we will take it and rejoice. Once the sun sets, we're supposed to have cloudy days again for almost a week. Bummer. Winter is still rough, but at least we got some snow and had the chance to play in it this week!
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