Sunday, January 8, 2017

Snow Day

I know that today is the Sabbath so having a snow day is a bit iffy.  However, Annabel is still sick, sick, sick, so church was out for me and her.  I decided that since Clover is just barely showing signs of recovery (she still took two naps today) and Emeline threw up so recently, that we had best remain at home so as to not share our germs.  Timothy did go to church so he could teach his class.

Sunday is a looooonnnnngggg day without church.  Around eight in the morning I sent Cowen and Eli outside to shovel our walk for Timothy to get out, and our neighbor's walk.  Our directly across the street neighbor is in the bishopric, and he left early, but his wife still had to get out of the driveway.  The boys did a great job getting the shoveling done.  It kept snowing until after church got out, so at 11:30, I sent Miriam and Emeline out to shovel both driveways for homecoming church-goers.

By the time the girls finished shoveling, all the other kids except Clover and Annabel had drifted outside and a major war had started, which involved Cowen stabbing people with his sword and the stabbed people doing dramatic death dives off the porch into the snow.  Eli had to come in for his viking axe, and eventually little Oskar had to come inside for a long knife so that more dying and falling into the snow could take place.

When Timothy got home he changed and went outside to shovel the snow that had been left in front of the driveway by the snowplows.  The kids started building a fort out of the snow that had built up, and finding a bucket handy, they made a pretty awesome fort.  Timothy helped by shoveling along the outer edge to make it look nice and shoveling extra snow on top to be packed down.  I made everyone come inside for lunch at about 3:30 (it was late because Annabel wanted to be held, so I had to finish lunch when Timothy could hold her).  After lunch, the kids were right back outside until it was too dark to see.  They were DRIPPING wet because the snow changed to rain and never changed back.  I swear I need to live somewhere with more robust weather.  Rain in January.  *Disgusted head shaking.*

Tomorrow we are not starting back to school, sadly, because I don't want to try to dive in and then spend the day holding a sick baby.  Instead, we made some tentative plans for picking everyone's next piano songs to learn, going over the new schedule, and continuing fort construction.  I hope Annabel feels better very, very soon.  I called Doc (my brother Derek) to ask about dehydration, but there really isn't much to be done but hope she keeps something down soon.  It is so sad when babies are sick.

Also, I will be terribly sad when I no longer have a two year old in the house.  They are hilarious.  I was holding Annabel while sitting in the yellow chair, and Clover was mad that she didn't have juice and she wasn't the one being held.  She put her head down on the chair because of her great sadness.  Annabel started kicking her head.  Without looking up Clover said, "Annabel, stop it!  Stop it, Annabel!"  Then, still without looking up, she said, "You bang my head."  Then she looked up and with a most accusatory look on her face she said, "It hurt."  Miriam and I were laughing very hard--especially at the little two year old, "Stop it!" Our laughter ended when Annabel threw up all over me.  Sigh.

I also failed to record this earlier, but a few days ago our neighbor from across the street hurried over to our house.  When I opened the door, Jessica said that she had gone out of her house to retrieve some boxes that had been delivered and had locked herself out.  Her baby, Burton, was alone in the house.  I lent her my phone to call her husband, but he didn't answer.  Jessica finally hit on the idea of having one of my kids try to fit through the doggie door.  I put shoes on Oskar and sent him across the street with Jessica and Cowen.  When he returned, he was alight with excitement.  He had to tell me the whole story of how he had to bend, "like this" and crawl through the door, and then "I turned the handle like this," and then "she went inside."  We all praised him and called him a hero and clapped, and then the entire tale had to be told to Timothy the second he got home which led to more clapping and cheering for the little guy.  Oskar was glowing with delight when he recounted his adventure to his dad.  It was darling.

And now I have to go unlock the downstairs bathroom for Cowen so that I will have to go down in 15 minutes and kick him out of the bathroom and confiscate his book.  Tally-ho.

1 comment:

Kayli said...

I love the story about Oskar!! That reminds me of how Orrin won a game yesterday, I think it was Uno or dominoes, and he was so thrilled he jumped up and was ecstatic with glee and it was so cute.