So imagine my surprise Wednesday morning when I woke up and there was snow on the ground. Now, I didn't see it right when I got up. I fed the baby at 6:00am, brushed my teeth, and made myself presentable enough for the bus stop, all while doing a great impersonation of a zombie. I woke Anna up, got her dressed, and THEN noticed snow through the window. But we hadn't gotten a phone call from the county, so I brought her downstairs and we went through our morning routine. Until I opened the front door with the intention of cleaning off the van to go to the bus stop, took one look at the actual amount of snow, and thought, "There is NO WAY schools in this county are open with this much snow."
And I was right, they were closed. But for some reason we didn't get a call, and I got the email later than most people did (at least according to people on Facebook). And as I sat there staring at my computer at 6:50am, finally comprehending that I was going to have all three kids stuck at home (literally stuck at home, almost-bald tires on the van don't exactly scream "Drive me through the snow with all the crazies to get to the Children's Museum!"), it dawned on me that I needed a game plan. While letting them watch TV and play on the computer all day is tempting, it only leads to crankiness and bad attitudes. The relative free time for me isn't worth the dramatic aftermath.
Here was my plan:
- Make paper snowflakes
- Eat a snack
- Play a family game
- Let the girls have free play time
- Eat lunch
- Do another craft
- Bake a treat with the girls, like chocolate chip cookies
- Have the girls help wash dishes (they still like doing it)
- Fix dinner
- Pass the kids off to Seth for entertainment
- Put happy kids to bed
Here is how the day actually went:
- Make paper snowflakes
- Eat a snack
- Play The Game of Life (the girls' choice), which takes an hour and a half, and deal with two walk-outs by Lizzie when things don't go her way
- Let the girls have free play time, which somehow turns into computer time
- Eat lunch
- Prepare to go outside in the snow/wind
- Go outside in the snow/wind (which was totally not on my list for today, but the girls really wanted to, so we did)
- Strip and dry kids after being outside in the snow/wind/rain/sleet/yuck
- Try not to kill self on random boots and articles of clothing left on the floor
- Hot chocolate
- Attempt to control kids when Seth comes home from work early
- Kids watch TV with Seth while I attempt to clean kitchen and keep baby from getting into everything
- Have Anna do homework and Lizzie wash dishes
- Let kids start to watch movie Seth just brought back from Blockbuster
- Attempt to fix dinner while also watching a newly mobile 8 month old, and resort to strapping him into the high chair to preserve sanity (but get headache due to the screeching caused by confinement)
- Feed everyone dinner
- Finish watching movie
- Send the girls upstairs to get ready for bed
- Watch Anna throw a huge fit because she wants to stay downstairs late because it's a snow day
- Put kids to bed
- Pig out on girl scout cookies... beecause I can
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| Cutting out snowflakes |
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| Some of the final product |
So, as you can see, not exactly as planned. But at least the first part of the morning followed the plan. After lunch it went entirely haywire.
Back to our title - how is a snow day a preview of summer? Well, it's a preview of having all three kids at home. All day. Seven days a week. Today has shown me that I might not be fully prepared for that. Although in the summer I can kick them outside to play without having to worry about frostbite and tons of wet clothes when they come back inside. So maybe I can survive this after all :)
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