Surviving the Polar Vortex

I'm not a winter person.  At. All.  I don't like snow.  I don't like cold.  I really don't like below zero temperatures.  

So this winter has not been great for me, especially this past week.  Below zero temperatures meant we spent the past week stuck inside.  The girls and I spent a little time shoveling on Saturday morning, but since then we've been inside.  We've had a lot of time together in our house.  

School was cancelled Monday and Tuesday due to the cold weather, so we ended up with an unexpected 4 day weekend.  Here's some of what we did to keep busy.

>>Dishes.  Little J finds this to be a super fun job.  I'm thankful for the company, though to be honest she's not the most effective helper quite yet.  (Also thankful E was able to get our sink working again with no problems after some pipes froze.  Not having a working kitchen sink on Monday was very frustrating.)

>>Singing and dancing to the Frozen soundtrack.  Or playing Frozen.  Or telling stories about Frozen.  It's an understatement to say Miss A enjoyed Frozen (a special Mommy-daughter date).  She insists on being called Elsa (funny to me because she actually has two little friends named Elsa), and I must be called Anna.  I'm no longer Mommy, I'm her sister.

>>Painting.  Both girls love painting, and both girls got new watercolors for Christmas.  Miss A got 2 sets, one including pink paint (an exciting addition!).

I love the intense look on her face when she's painting.

>>Painting the snow.  An extension of our painting activity was to paint the snow.  I saw this posted somewhere a few weeks ago, and thought it looked fun.  I shoveled some snow into a tub and let the girls paint.  Miss A had a lot of fun painting the snow, and was able to make pictures in the snow.  Little J had a lot of fun flinging snow around the dining room and quickly lost her painting privileges.

>>Laundry.  Not very exciting, but I was way behind.  Our dryer ran straight from 9am to 8pm.  I used the dining room table as my folding space, so we had some creative indoor picnic spots.  The girls thought it was funny.  

>>Lots of snuggling.  With many, many blankets.  Watching a few too many cartoons.  But that's what days off are for, right?