The “Dog Formerly Known as Freddie” is now called Lily.  I thought my daughter was joking until I saw that Freddie had come to rest beside the man of the house and was wearing. . . a headband.

You know me, I’m a planner.  I enjoy making a plan, but the truth is I need someone to push me to work the plan.  I created plan for Spring Break that included the following for every day:  1)a verse to study  2)something to cook together 3)a craft 4)an activity.  Sounds good, eh?

Well, I think we did one thing every day and I was pleased with that.  Where I had assumed we would be up and at the day by 7:00 (since our kids never sleep past 5:45AM), we never really got up before 8:00AM.  It set a tone for the week of relaxing and enjoying the slow pace.

Monday, when I was not yet relaxed about my plan, we baked cake.  We divided the batter into five bowls and dyed each bit a different color.  The kids then proceeded to put five spoonfuls of each color into their mason jar.

It was messy and fun and pretty to look at.  We put the jars into a dish with a little water and cooked them.  They seemed a bit messier than what we saw on Pinterest.

While the cake was baking, the kids did some painting.  The plan had been to paint with qtips but the paint was all dried out and I found the dot paints “accidentally”.

The cake was yummy and I would do it again with just a few changes.  I would NOT put icing on top. . . at least not store icing.  YUCK! I would wipe the lips of the jars before cooking too.  Ehhh – live and learn.  The kids didn’t seem to mind:

Palm Sunday was like no other day in my life! We woke up on time and started getting kiddos fed and ready for church.  The younger two were singing during both services and so I was closely policing KB’s choices for clothes.

Snow started around 8:15 or 8:30.  It was light but steady and I suggested Honey go move our car to the end of the driveway since they were saying we should end up with 6 inches before it was all over.  By 9:00AM the ground had a complete dusting and by noon there was already four inches in our yard and the fluff was still falling.  

By no small margin, this was the biggest snow of my life.  By the time the snow stopped falling the next day there were reports of 12.5 inches at the airport.  The city was reporting less with 6 inches of accumulation.  We are west of the city and I have no problem saying 8 inches easy.

4/5 Kicks trooped out to play on Monday morning.  My ankle is still giving me a lot of trouble and so I didn’t feel comfortable joining them, but I was in the doorway with a camera at the ready.

Watching Little try to lift her short legs out of the snow was hysterical.  I finally called out, “Just fall back and make a snow angel!”  She did.

Bubba decided to fall forward and see how it felt to bury his head in the snow.

Of course KB was full of plans and suggestions for what to build, where to run, and who we should invite to join us.

It was decided that a snowman HAD to be built.  Look at that snow!! It was begging for a snowman.  Turns out I am the only person in my family who has ever built a snowman.  It was fun to watch everyone working “together”.

Now, I know what you are thinking. . . that huge yard FULL of snow and the snowman is shorter than Little.  Well, I am chalking it up to it being their first time.

Okay, another thing you may be noticing is that the snowman has a fourth ball of snow.  Yes, leave it to us at the Blue Hutch to have a special needs snowman! We don’t know why the creators gave him that extra roll but we know “It’s not a tumah”.

Here’s my Honey with his first snowman:

Little named the snowman “Little”.  He didn’t make it 15 minutes before the game became to crash the snowman.  The kids made it about 15 minutes past that before coming in for hot chocolate.

On that note, let me end this post by telling you how this ended for me.  The kids came in and asked for hot chocolate and I responded, “Oh, of course! That would be perfect.  I am just so sorry I didn’t have it ready for you when you came it.”  Bubba responded by saying, “Yea.  The time we went out to play in the snow on February 13, 2012 we were out of hot chocolate and didn’t have any either.”

Thank, Bubs.