Snow and ice days (and days and days)

Well, who knew we'd get a second winter break this year? We got an ice storm, followed by some snow, then some more snow, then some more snow again, and by the time it was all said and done we'd had a solid two weeks off of school. It was pretty awesome. (Side note: each new day school was canceled I'd see a string of parents on facebook bemoaning the agony of having their kids stuck at home even longer, and they were going crazy and everyone was fighting and they just couldn't wait to send them back to school. It made me feel so lucky that we were just having a great time sleeping in and playing all day. I got sick and tired of the cold and snow by the end, but having the kids home with all other obligations canceled was a gift.)

The first day when we got the ice, all of the trees and things looked like this...

A lot of people lost power, but we got away with just a few flickers throughout the evening.

Then the first snow fell so we layered up and went sledding at the horse farm. The bad news is our two new sleds broke within three runs. The good news is that the fragments of sled still worked pretty well. We tried a pool tube also, which worked great for a couple of runs before it too bit the dust. Maybe next time we'll invest in a little higher quality equipment. The older kids went exploring and found a little frozen pond, which they proceeded to stomp holes in, and naturally one of them ended up in water up to their knees. I won't name names, but that kid still stayed out to play a few more hours after that. Snow is fun.

I took a lame little photo with my phone (below), but it doesn't come EVEN CLOSE to displaying how beautiful the ice-covered trees looked in the sunlight. Diamonds. It literally looked like diamond-covered trees twinkling as far as we could see in every direction.

Coming soon...inside snow-day fun.