I had just enjoyed a great brunch at Lucky’s Café and was all ready for their arrival.  I had planned numerous activities, knowing that everyone would have a great time if I kept them all busy.  Nick and Sally would be skipping naps and that’s always like playing Russian Roulette.

First up was playing with snow. Once again we brought in snow from outside and everyone had a blast playing with it in the comfort of our home.  I had purchased some straw construction kits on clearance and they went well with the snow.

At some point, I decided that red hot candies might make good smiles.  Sally was eager to try them out.  We already had Cheerios out for the eyes.

If you give kids Cheerios, red hot candies and snow, you may wind up with gross looking pink mushy water.  It still cleans up easily.

After playing with the snow, it was time for a break.  Everyone enjoyed Wallace and Gromit along with some popcorn.  I tried out microwave popcorn in a brown bag.  It turned out fine.  One of the Muppet Movies made an appearance as well.  While they cleaned up, I sopped up the melted snow with an ultra absorbent cloth and caught up on the dishes.

After the movie time, we had more craft time.  This time we had play dough, coloring books, sticky sticks, and rocket designing.

My niece was more interested in Stephen’s project to remove our magnet locks from our cupboards.  She ended up using the screwdriver and taking most of them off for us.

I’m glad everyone had such a great time.  The cousins don’t get together too often, but we are looking forward to more time with them this summer.

We didn’t get a ton of snow.  The roads were clear, but the sidewalks were snowy.  Some had a nice layer of ice underneath.

Before long, everything was snowy, especially our scarves.  Nick and Sally decided that they liked catching snowflakes on their tongues and eating snow.  Nick was carrying a stick and using it to pick up chunks of snow to eat.  It looked kind of like eating a marshmallow from a campfire off the stick.

We ended up walking just over a half mile.  Nick was doing just fine, but started to get really cold when we turned into the wind.  He was having fun walking ahead.  Sally was really tired and wanted to be carried.  She started falling down.  Her ploy didn’t work as we made her walk the whole way.

It was so nice to have some family time outside before there was too much hustle and bustle on the roads.  I’m glad we made sure to enjoy it snowing out, since it’s supposed to be 46 degrees by Tuesday.  This had been the craziest winter!