Throwback Tuesday: Keeping Busy Indoors on a COLD Winter's Day.

 *Originally posted January 5, 2018 when my boys were 10, 11, & 13. 

 

We enjoyed another quiet week at home. Temperatures are staying quite cold and we had a few snowstorms again this week. The forecasters were predicting a huge storm to hit Wednesday night into Thursday morning dumping another foot or so of snow and we were prepared to lose power.  Losing power is always a real headache but losing power in the middle of winter when temperatures are below freezing is so much worse.  Temperatures aren't forecasted to get much above 2 degrees for the next few weeks!  So we are quite happy to hibernate at home.

It was so cold on Friday (like single digits cold) that the boys and I elected to stay inside and wrap up with our blankets.  We watched Boss Baby and Despicable Me 3.  Evan and Ian worked on another Lego set Evan had gotten for Christmas. Evan put together the building while Ian built the dragon.  Alec put together his Lego boat and worked on one of his scratch art pictures. We played Forbidden Island, Tellestrations, and rummy-- well, Alec, Ian and I played Tellestrations and Rummy while Evan threw a fit in his room.  After dinner the younger boys, my husband and I all played a quick game of Headbands.

Ian had his turtle out of the tank and walking around.  The turtle is finally brave enough that he doesn't spend all of his time in his shell anymore. 

Evan's Building

The dragon Ian put together for him

 

Saturday Ian woke feeling pretty crummy and elected to stay home from work.  My husband took Evan to work with him since Evan had a pretty lousy day on Friday and got most of his privileges taken away.  They went to check on the hydro plant and Evan made my husband send me a picture of the falls because he said (and I quote) "Now that's a sight to see!" and it was.  

 

The falls are quite lovely when they're 1/2 frozen.

 

They brought home some Subway grinders for lunch and by then it was snowing.  We watched a fox scoot across the frozen lake during lunch with his red fur really sticking out from all the white.  After lunch my husband roped Alec into helping him work on some projects at the woodworking shop.  Ian spent most of the day playing video games, lying on the couch, and watching TV.

Thankfully Ian was feeling much better by Sunday morning but we still told him to take it easy and spend the day resting.  We roped the other two boys into helping us clean house. We even went through the boys' rooms, rearranged some furniture, and got rid of 6 or 7 bags of "stuff" that no one wanted anymore.  My husband and I took a quick ride to town to drop off the garbage and pick up some parts to clean our toilet.  We also stopped to get some supplies for dinner and a few movies to watch.  We lost power for a few hours after lunch so Ian and I spent the afternoon playing cards. Once the power came back on my husband fixed the toilet and we ate dinner while watching Lego Ninjago.  We all went to bed early and no one really seemed to care it that it was New Year's Eve.

I made eggs, bacon, and toast for breakfast on Monday and while everyone was eating I told them we still had the downstairs to clean.  Since Ian seemed to be back to his old self with just a bit of a stuffy nose we had him clean his room.  We all worked together to finish cleaning and I got most of my kitchen cabinets and drawers cleaned out too!  Once we were done cleaning we enjoyed another quiet day at home watching movies and playing with toys.  I worked on figuring out how to use my new Cricut and read a book while doing a ton of laundry.  Overall it was a very quiet start to the new year.

Alec went to karate on Tuesday morning and while he was at class I did a quick grocery shopping.  The boys worked a bit on some math and each got back to reading their books but we didn't really do much else for school.  Alec brought his color by number book in the car and worked on completing one of his fairy tale pages.  Alec and Evan spent much of the day in Evan's room playing Legos and I started working on a birthday gift for my mom.  After dinner Ian went with his father to get haircuts and really stock up on food at BJ's.  We hadn't been to BJ's in months and our list was quite long.

We had to leave the house Wednesday afternoon for the younger two boys to go to the orthodontist but other than that we stayed pretty close to home once again.  They worked on some reading, math, and cursive and I offered to help anyone use my new Cricut if they wanted to make birthday cards for my mom. They all made some really beautiful cards that I'll have to share AFTER my mom opens them.

The snowstorm was just starting when we woke up Thursday morning.  We quickly got our math, reading and grammar work out of the way and I let the boys go play video games early knowing they'd most likely be spending most of the afternoon on quiet pursuits like coloring and playing with Legos.  We had near white out conditions and could feel the wind shaking the house!

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