Frigid

ICE, ICE BABY: Today brought clear blue skies and c-c-c-old temperatures. The high today was 25° F.

The combination of snow and super cold has resulted in hardcore ice on many/most area roads. The news today was full of commuter horror stories from last night, including accounts of it taking 10 hours or more to get from south Seattle to Tacoma via I-5. Normally, that would be a 30-minute endeavor.

Fortunately, there was nowhere we HAD to be (music was canceled this week for Thanksgiving holiday and yoga was canceled due to the weather). We spent the majority of the morning indoors. One of the things we did to pass time was making some pine cone turkeys.

We'd collected the pine cones a couple of weeks ago at the kids' school in Shoreline. We collected some leaves a couple of weeks ago on a jaunt near Discovery Park. Finally, we combined them (along with some googly eyes, pipe cleaners and a little construction paper) to craft cute little turkeys.
CJ's is the one with the bigger eyes.

After turkey time, we headed upstairs (where it's a bit warmer). We've been doing our math upstairs for a couple of weeks now. This morning we started a new chapter in math - it's about units of measurement. It's a welcome break from the straight up addition and subtraction.

DORA DETRACTORS I've mentioned on these pages how the kids (now 6 and 7) seem to think they're sooo beyond Dora the Explorer (their BFF from the not too distant past). Last night out of nowhere, I recalled a Saturday Night Live cartoon where they made fun of Dora. I showed it to the kids. They think it's HYSTERICAL. It was the first thing CJ asked about today, before he was even vertical. "Can I watch 'Maraka'?!"

POWDER: Around noonish I thought it time to venture to the great outdoors. The kids had a rather tame snowball fight and then Rick joined us for some tame runs on slight slopes at Bayview Park.

Once Christian got home from work, he took the kids for a much longer, more adventurous sledding session. Here's some live action footage!

There's more rough footage here, on YouTube.