Snow much activity!

We had two weekends in a row of snow. Our first weekend of "snow" left us with nearly 2 inches of sleety ice. It started Friday evening (1/12) and ended Sunday night (1/14). Monday the kids didn't have school for MLK Jr. Birthday and begged to play outside, but the temps didn't even got into the 20s, so we stayed inside. Tuesday wasn't much better. Wednesday (1/17) it got to the upper 20s so I decided to try and shovel a pathway from the driveway to the front door - 15 feet or so. The snow shovel didn't even make a dent in the ice, so I spent a good hour using the garden rake to chisel a path just wide enough to get to the door.

The next day, it warmed up again, and this time Emily offered to shovel snow for me. For those who haven't seen my driveway, it's pretty long ... you can easily park 8 cars - 2 across and 4 deep - on it and since our house faces north, the sun doesn't get much of a chance to work it's magic. But Emily was excited about shoveling; she worked really hard and did a fantastic job. Between the two of us, we got 1/3 of the driveway cleared. Friday after school, we worked on it again and got another 1/3 cleared. I had really wanted to get it all done, because I'd heard something on the news about more snow coming over the weekend. And I really didn' t want to deal with snow on top of a thick layer of ice.


*****
Monday (1/22) after school the children played out in the snow and did a little sledding on the kid sized sledding hill we have next to our house. Sam took some kind of a spill and came in screaming hysterically. From what we've been able to piece together from his account and Becca's, He came down the hill at an odd angle and ended up going under the trampoline and we think, he hit one of the tramp legs.

The result was a bump on his right forehead the size of a large marshmallow - black, purple and yellow with a small red line running down the center of it. I have never seen a true goose egg protruding from a child's forehead. We watched him pretty closely for the rest of the day and by morning the swelling was gone, but the discoloration went all the way down into his eyebrow.

Every day Sam has been going into the bathroom to check on his goose egg to see if it's healing. At dinner Thursday night, after having checked it earlier in the day, he told Becca, "Becca, it's healing, now my goose egg is smaller!" Without missing a beat, Becca replied, "Now it's a chicken egg!"

*****
Saturday afternoon (1/20) I mentioned it started to snow ... by Sunday morning we had 4-5 inches of perfect snowman building powder. It was beautiful and wet and sticky. We didn't get out on Sunday to make a snowman - huge disappointment! - Monday the snow was more like ice so the kids couldn't make a snowman then, but Tuesday it softened up, and Becca made this beauty after school all by herself (Emmy and Sam were at Grandma's for the afternoon). I was so proud of her ingenuity and determination to make this snowman.

Years ago my SIL gave us a snowman kit - complete with eyes, mouth, carrot, pipe, buttons, and hat. This is the first year we've had snowman building snow and it was so nice to pull out this kit and use it. It was such a great addition to Rebecca's already perfect snowman.