Christmas is coming

Snow and Santa

We got our first real snow of the winter yesterday.  By "real" I mean it stuck and stayed more than a few hours.  The kids had a great time playing in it even if it was only a couple of inches. 

And, surprisingly, we only had a few tears getting everyone into their snow clothes.  T had the most trouble and I thought for a while that she wasn't going to go out at all.  But after watching her older brother and sisters having such a good time she decided that she could put up with her snow pants being a little uncomfortable.

 

 

  

 

We also saw Santa this week and T was very brave.  She climbed right up into his lap with no tears this year.  So sweet!

I'm Baaa-aack!

Wow. The last four months went by quickly. I didn't really intend to take a break from blogging. It just turns out that this blogging thing is a little more difficult/time consuming than I thought it would be. I still would like to try to keep it up. So I'm starting again. I won't be posting everyday or anything. Not even going to try for that. But if I can post twice a week...once a week...at least a couple times a month, that would be good enough for now.

So we have had record snow falls here in Southern Maryland this winter.





Some people are starting to complain about it. But I love it! I keep hoping for more snow. I'm finally starting to get my system down for getting the kids bundled up and out to play and back inside again with a minimum of tears. All of our gear is organized and ready to go. The kids are getting used to wearing all that gear. And the older two are starting to be able to get themselves mostly dressed. The main thing that continued to cause tears from everyone (me included) was the constant readjustment of mittens. They just don't stay tucked neatly into their coat-sleeves like the kids want. As soon as they move their arms the mittens get un-tucked and the wrists get cold. Well, not any more! It occurred to me that if they just had a layer of fleece or something to cover that gap between their coats and their mittens we could stop all the fuss. So this weekend I spent an hour and sewed up several pairs of "wrist warmers" for the kids. I know they look inside out, but I decided to leave them that way on purpose. Since they are meant to go under the coat and under the mittens I left the seams on the outside for maximum comfort on the inside.



It worked like a charm! Since then we have gone sledding twice without a single complaint of cold wrists or snow in their mittens.



And I haven't had to re-adjust a single mitten. J likes hers so much that she has taken to wearing them around the house. Here she is wearing her wrist warmers and the matching neck-warmer I made.



I know it's a small thing, but it felt like a major accomplishment to solve that problem. And I did it without spending a dime!