Almost a Snow Day

Yesterday, we woke up to snow on the ground. There is a reason we moved to the Northwest. It's not supposed to snow here! The kids beg to differ.

(I don't know why I hate snow so much. Maybe it's because I've lived in Montana, Wisconsin, and Utah and have reached my snow quota. Maybe it's the MESS it leaves all over my house!)

Anyway, because Steven didn't have school yesterday because of a planned teacher work day, we were looking forward to sleeping in an extra hour. (He usually leaves an hour before the other kids.) Ben had different plans--when he looked out the window (at 6:15 a.m.) and saw that it had snowed, he woke us all up by hurrying to empty the dishwasher, his assigned morning chore, so he could go play outside. We told him he had to wait until 7:00 a.m. to go outside.

Our school district delayed the start of school 1 hour, so the kids were able to make a snowman before they had to leave for school. Ben and Rachel were pretty bummed that school wasn't cancelled. Steven got the good end of the deal! He got to spend the day playing with his friends in the snow. When the snow melted, he came inside and spent the rest of the day playing on the Wii.

The teachers at school got Ben and Rachel's hopes up by telling them that we were supposed to get 2-4 inches last night. We awoke again this morning at 6:15 a.m.--this time, to the sound of someone sobbing. Steve crawled out of our nice toasty bed (we just got a mattress pad with a heater in it--makes getting out of bed even more difficult!) to go see what was wrong. Ben was soooo sad that it hadn't snowed.

To lift Ben's mood, I changed the subject. I taught him how to make French Toast. Watch out Emeril--he did it almost all by himself! Then he came up with the idea that we should have a special "Spotlight a Kid Day" and that today should be his day. So Ben got to pick what we had for dinner tonight--tacos--and eat them on the special red plates. And he got to choose what we would do as a family tonight--play Settlers of Catan--Cities and Knights. He was looking forward to it all day because we usually only play it on the weekend.

So this afternoon when Steve said that we had a Court of Honor for Steven tonight, we moved dinner up to 5:30 so we could squeeze in a game of "Settlers." We obviously didn't make it through the whole game in an hour, so at 6:30 we declared the winner--ME! :)

Stevens Awarded his 1st Class Rank Advancement