winter fun

I am working hard to fully embrace January for all it offers.  Lots of snow, lots of cold to make the snow stick and the chance to wear my faux-fur lined jacket with attitude (the coat's attitude, not mine). 

But last night, seeing pictures of Schoodic scrolling by on the girls' digital photo frame in their room I had one resounding insight: post-Christmas means we are halfway to Schoodic. 

The week after Christmas we had two installments of snow which stuck around thanks to a week of temps that struggled to rise above 10 degrees.  When it's that cold out, you really just have to stay in, load up the wood stove and keep your tea mug full. 

Some silly things in our house:

Maya is We are struggling to keep Maya's curls on her head.  The last many weeks it seems they are growing out and the new hair coming in aims to be straight.  Short of desperately taking the curling iron to her, we are trying to preserve the curls by keeping it shorter and using some product.  We have ceased combing and are only "finger combing" her hair now.  We understand that we can't stop the process if it meant to happen, but it is harder to let go of the course of her hair than you might imagine.

(She will probably read this post when she is older with unmanageably curly hair and say, "Why didn't you just let it be so I wouldn't have this curly mop!")

 

Any old day of the week, you never know who might be taking up a seat on the couch.  We are officially outnumbered and if they decide to start an army, we are in real trouble. (Mother's note: only two of these are bonafide American Girls with their hefty price tag.  The other's are $15 Target girls with the tanning-bed sort of complexions.)

 

 

When the thermometer has allowed, we've embraced January by hitting the snow. Uncle Brock plowed for us after the last storm (we usually snow blow).  I came inside when he was done and said to the girls, "We have SNOWBANKS!" and they just looked at me like yeah, big whoop.   Then we went outside and made a tunnel through one and the snowbank rose a few notches on the fun meter.

 

(Ummm... the Christmas cookies/wine/random indulgence of December meant I almost didn't fit through my own tunnel which is why I'm okay with only being half-way to Schoodic right now.)

 

Ella wouldn't go through it but Maya was all over that tunnel.

 

But perhaps the most fun of all came when Sandi's parents took us all snow tubing at Hermon Mountain.  There were 11 of us in all (Brock was still sick from the awful respiratory bug going around) and Makenna just made the age 3 cut-off so it was fun for everyone. Tubing is done is 3 hour blocks ($12 per person)and we made it almost the whole time.  We went down the hill in various conglomerations (with Maya and Brevan going alone a few times!) but the most fun was when we all hooked up and went down backwards at top speed.  We took a ton a of video (I'm sure a movie will follow) but there was one picture. 

 

What fun when a family can play like this together.