Thanksgiving and a Winter Kickoff

Well, Thanksgiving is over and it was just fine.  I only took two pictures of the whole weekend but that's OK.  There are many holidays and things I remember fondly that were not photographed.  There was a lot of eating, I saw some of the Macy's Parade and spent every single meal cajoling and threatening my kids to get them to eat something...anything.  Pretty much like every other meal of my life. 

Here is one picture...

Snowmen crafts!  This was my idea as I have a childhood (and high school and college) Thanksgiving tradition of making an ornament with my cousins on my dad's side.  I thought it would be fun for the kids. It turns out, my kids are too young for this and I had to do everything for them and then keep them from ruining what they picked before it dried.  The older kids had fun though.  The four above were made by our nine year old nephew. 

I guess I actually took two pictures of them...That jaunty little guy in the blue was made my me.  The lovely specimen with no hat and a bunch of red paint on it was made by one of my kids...classic.

Here is my only other picture.  It features Milo and Tessa playing with the beads for my mom's Christmas tree.  I took it because I thought it was funny that Tessa looked like a crazy person with that hat on.  I let the kids play with those beads because she has had those since I was a child and they never get tangled.  Well, guess who managed to get them tangled? 

On Sunday evening we made it home just as an ice storm was beginning to pelt the windows with sleet.  I walked out to get the mail and had to creep along the front of the house under the roof overhang so I wouldn't fall flat on my back.  The next morning it was a full snow storm. 

This was yesterday afternoon.  Well, guess what, it's still storming.  It's like one of the days long blizzards from the Little House on the Prairie series.  I was dreading getting Ben to preschool this morning and got up extra early to get ready because I knew we would have to leave early.  After I was already dressed with makeup on I heard the news...no preschool.  No public school or private school in Bismarck!  They never cancel school here.  It's not like when I was growing up when half the kids came from the country on a bus and they would call off the busses several times a year.  I think cancelling school causes a lot of problems for parents now.  It's not like the 90's and the rest of history before that when everyone's moms were home and often their dads too (farmers!) and if they weren't you could just trudge on over to your grandma's or babysittter's or a friends house until you figured it out.  Early dismissal used to be awesome but here in a city in this society it would cause mass chaos and panic.

So the storm is still raging outside.  I thought it seemed to be letting up earlier but I looked at the radar and look what is moving in from the North.  Hmmmm awesome. 

Yesterday the kids were hounding me all day to play outside and I kept putting it off until after lunch, when Milo was napping, etc.  They finally got to go out when Justin got home and was shoveling.  Ben has an endless tolerance for being out in the cold. 

You can see how he is ready to launch right into the snow in this picture. 

The inevitable happened right away!  I feel bad.  His snowpants barely fit anymore.  Hopefully they can work until January when everything goes on clearance. 

Mmmmm...delicious fresh white snow!

Tessa was more hesitant but she had fun too.

Ben wanted to shovel like Daddy so we gave him one.  He has pretty good shoveling form!

Yesterday I managed to get the Christmas tree set up as well as my Christmas village.  Today I told the kids we would hang ornaments after Ben was home from school.  Of course, the first thing he wanted to do when he heard there was no school was decorate.  It wasn't even 8:00 a.m. yet. But now everything is mostly done and I just have to clean up the chaos and re-shelf and hide the boxes.  During this big decorating spree I always get overwhelmed by the huge mess and want to hide and wonder if decorating is even worth it at all.  We have so much crap!  Just taking out the decorations is so much work and the house is a mess all around it so it doesn't really look nice anyway!  The kids get so excited they just tear the boxes apart and now there are ornaments all over the house. It's hard for me to let go of the fantasy of a catalogue Christmas.  Oh well...I will share pictures in another post when I get the disaster cleaned up.