I'm Stealing It #9

I was pretty excited for my kids to start school on Wednesday. After all it had been 16 days since they had been at school soaking up all the amazing things there are out there for them to learn from their wonderful teachers - oh yeah and I needed some peace and quiet.

Wednesday morning I woke up ready to cook them a hearty breakfast and send them on their way. Flipped on the TODAY show and in glaring letters right there, scrolling along the bottom, Shawnee Mission USD CLOSED. WHAT? It hadn't even started snowing yet, how can they close school? Granted there was snow on the ground but only because it had not been warmer than 2 degrees for like 12 days, that snow was old - left over since Christmas Eve. Admittedly it was supposed to dump like 6 inches of snow in like 3 hours but that wasn't going to start until like 3:00 PM - couldn't they just go to school for a few hours???? Apparently not. Laughingly, my husband headed out the door to work leaving me with these crazed banshees to handle on my own.

As I am writing this, it is now Thursday evening and we are about to close out day 17 of not being in school. So far we have survived although my best guess is that they will not have school tomorrow either. Check back with me tomorrow night.

Boy you have to get creative when you have two children under 6 cooped up in a 2,500 square foot house for 4 days straight. We tried all sorts of things.

*Baked about 19 dozen cookies and decorated them
*Played with every single toy Santa and family gave us (thank God for Christmas and new toys appearing recently!)
*Painted toe and finger nails and every other part of our bodies we could think of
*Watched every television show that ever was - twice
*Crawled up and down and down and up and up and down the bunk bed ladder which is not attached to the bed unless an adult is there to supervise
*Cleaned out closets
*Organized bookshelves (it is amazing what you can get your kids to do when they are bored)
*Ran 248 laps through the kitchen/dining room/living room area
*Punched, slapped, tickled and hugged each other to death

and so many more things that I cannot remember. Of course at this point I can barely remember my name.

I saw many other mothers on Facebook who were crazed as well and I was thrilled when people began giving each other suggestions for boredom busters. One stuck out to me as the perfect solution.

I have been feeling terrible that my kids could not go out and play in the snow when it was so fresh and pretty but with the meteorologists telling me that exposed skin would get frostbite within 20 minutes, that was not something I was going to risk!

I took a big empty bucket outside and filled it with snow three different times, dumped the snow in the bathtub, got the kids dressed in warm clothes and let them have at it.

We determined it was not enough snow to build a snowman but it was enough for little people to make snow angels, throw snowballs at one another and have good clean fun. Total, the gathering of the snow by mom as the kids watched in wonderment of what I was doing, the dressing them in their snow gear, playing in the snow and getting out of their snow gear ate up about 2 hours of my day. Not bad!