A Snow Day for the Cold Day

When you live in the north you get use to cold winters. OK so maybe you don't get use to it, but you come accept it as an inevitable thing. Today was a bit extreme with temperatures of -11 registering on my car this morning and -3 at 1:30. It was enough to make you want to stay in bed. When I got up to shower at 5AM and discovered my cold water in the bathroom not working due to frozen pipes, I wished I had stayed in bed. So it was a nice turn of events at 6:20 when the phone rang and I found out that my school was closed today due to school buses not starting. I guess I wasn't the only one that didn't want to get out of bed. So after dropping Chloe off at school (we drove her) Alexa and I settled in to a day at home to wait for the plumber. We had a good day together and were even able to egt the pipes unfrozen all by ourselves. She did a lot of checking on her hamster (now named Cutie) and singing her way through a lot of activities. Here she was when I snuck up on her singing while painting her bird house.

New Pet

Alexa has been saving her allowance for the last four months. She committed herself to buying her own hamster. Anyone who knows me well will know how humorous a thought this is as I have no love of rodents of any kind. However, it is her money and I do see a lot of value in having your own pet to take care of. Last week we went to the pet store to see what a hamster costs. She discovered that she had more than enough money for one, so this afternoon (frigid temperatures and all) she got her hamster.

We set the cage up on her dresser in her room. As you can see she is pretty excited.

Hamsters are quite hard to get a picture of, but after a few attempts I was able to get this one.

She is yet to be named as Alexa hasn't settled on one yet. Although she has reminded us, "It is my decision to make." We do know that it is a female (so they tell me) and two months old. As you can imagine Cabbie is quite interested in her as well.

Winter Fun

Yesterday's weather was 28 and sunny. I know that leaves some southerners shivering at the thought but up here that is prime outdoor play weather. The girls spent the morning stuffing themselves with way too much sugary stuff at a birthday party so I decided we should head over to the park to skate. Chloe was doing really well and really only used her crate for a resting spot. Alexa was a little too interested in the big snow banks to skate much.

Considering this morning we woke up to negative temperatures and frozen water pipes. It is good that we got outside yesterday.

The Encore...

Party Weekend

It was a birthday party weekend for the kids. They attended one yesterday and another one today. Here they are all dressed up today in their nice coats and everything. It was a fairy theme party so Alexa made sure to bring her wings, crown, and wand.


Unfortunately when we got to the party my camera batteries died. It was just as well as I was there to offer my expertise in directing small children towards activities and away from destruction of the home where they party was taking place. I took a few pictures afterwards at home though. The kids decorated fairy houses at the party. The glue didn't work so well so we got out the glue gun when we got home and attached some more pieces.

Chloe was kind enough to pose for a picture before she went up to change so you can see how wonderful she looked all dressed up. Grammie Sharon bought her this dress at an April Cornell clearance sale a few years ago and she is finally big enough to wear it.

Alexa posed too after I begged.

I think that is a pose called annoyed with mommy, but you can see she was cute as a button in her dress too. That was a Christmas gift from Grammie Eva and Alexa says it is her new favorite dress.

Chloe Skating

Adventures in Ice Skating

The girls and I went ice skating today. We wanted to try out one of the outside rinks that the city floods and maintains in the local parks. I had decided to get them some crates to use to balance. They offer this at one of the rinks we have been using. The crates snap together pretty well, but I was really high tech and secured them with twist ties just to be sure they didn't come apart. They offer the kids a place to hold on to and balance as they are getting a feel for the ice.

You can see that they moved away from needing them at all after a bit. I figure pretty soon we will only bring one to carry the skates in and sit on while we switch from boots to skates and back again.

It was pretty cold with the wind off the lake. We were bundled up pretty good. after almost two hours of skating we heade home for some hot chocolate to warm us up.