We more than atoned for our up-till-now mild winter this week. Wednesday morning the snow and wind started - not early enough for everything to shut down in the first place, oh no, most things opened and had to close at 10:00 or so. Fortunately the schools didn't open, but my office did. (And I only had a short walk to get to work and back again once it closed, hooray!) The girls were more than happy to get a snow day - they got up, though, and did their violin practice with me before I went to work, and I came home to find the K'Nex amusement park rides underway. Jean got the Ferris Wheel and the Pirate Ship Ride for Christmas, and she's proving to be an adept builder with only a bit of help interpreting the instructions. K'Nex is fun to build with (once your thumbs toughen up); it builds "skeletons" of objects with rods and star connectors, so you can get big really fast. The Ferris wheel is over three feet high, and the Pirate Ship Ride similar. The people are about two inches high, which may give you a sense of scale. The connections beetween the rods and stars are very very tight (hence the sore thumbs) so constructions can be picked up and carried around, for the most part. We finally found my stash of random K'Nex pieces, too, so Eleanor was kept busy with some flat object-outlines, and Jean found instructions for a trick-bike and a person to ride it. Cool. Bob took photos, so I guess he'll put them up eventually.
By Thursday morning the snowfall had tapered off, but the wind had come up, making it even nastier outside than it was. The schools were still closed, but my office was not, so in light of not yet being assigned any tasks or self-education and the lingerment of my cold, I decided to take a family-day off. Bob and I spent most of it digging out piles of junk from Eleanor's room and ours, and found an awful lot of stuff to throw and give away - quite a bit more space available when we get around to getting it out the door. Brownies and choir was cancelled that evening, but the girls were able to get out in the yard and have some snow time. Good thing, since it's supposed to rain this weekend.
I really like hanging out at home with the kids when there's something to do rather than watch a movie, but paying attention to what they're doing, trying to get a few things done myself, and answering the darn phone often leaves accuracy to be desired. Not to mention that since our portable phone died, it's an aerobic feat to run from the second floor to the first to answer the phone, and impossible to reach from the third floor in three rings. I've had a taste of how Bob spends his day; I still think I have the easier job.