Snow Days

This winter has been unbelievable in the amount of snow days we have had off of school.  I LOVE snow days.  To me they are unexpected, magical days I get with my children.  They are opportunities to drop everything, clear the schedule and just be together.  They are days when I make a yummy breakfast for us, we stay in our PJ's all day, the kids play outside, we have hot chocolate, make cookies, watch movies and play games.  

Last week we happened to have snow days #11 and #12 of the school year.  Now if we were still living in Charlottesville this amount of snow days would mean adding on to the end of year school calendar.  But the county that we live in has what they call a "fixed calendar" so that as long as we stay under 15 snow days they will not add on school days to the end of the year.  These days were particularly unusual because they came with a projected 13-18 inches of snow.  The day before the storm hit everyone was making a trip to the grocery store.  This is what the bread isle happened to look like...luckily I was not in need of bread!  The other two items I noticed the store being out of was chocolate chips and flour.  Happily, I have chocolate chips in my food storage for just a time as this!

McKenna went out in the morning on our deck to measure the snow.  Her first attempt was with a regular ruler that just disappeared so we handed her the yard stick.  We measured in at 16 inches of snow!

Sadie got thrown out several times and would just sink and be completely covered with snow.  I'll just say that it was not myself or the kids who kept throwing her out in the snow.

Even thought we've had lots of snow this winter and the last several years, we haven't had anything like this in about 5 years.  Grayson really loved being able to be outside in it.  We don't have gloves for him and so I tapped on some mittens of Gavin's to his wrists.  

The kids made forts, caves, chairs, and even took turns burying each other in the snow.

We made and decorated sugar cookies