Snow, planting seeds, and art class underway!

First things first: HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM (my most faithful blog follower!). In honor of her birthday I promised her 2 blog posts by midnight so I better get on it - here's the first so hopefully she can read at least one of them before her bedtime. It seems appropriate to start this post then with one of her favorite things: SNOW!  While no snow today with temperatures in the 60's, we did have a small snow recently that turned to a wintry mix right when the girls were headed out into it to play. But that didn't deter them, since they, after all, are their grandma's granddaughters! They were soaked when they came inside, but happy and eager to consume the hot cocoa I had made. Here they are trying out the sledding hill:

Snow or no snow, come February 1 it is time to plant more seeds! We start onions around January 1 and then parsley and cilantro at the beginning of February. Terah was a great little helper for Jason this year, and it makes us eager to see what this gardening season holds for us. I'm wondering what kind of full body sunscreen we are going to be able to find, because this gal doesn't like clothing in the middle of winter so what will July be like!

When we are not planting seeds or out sledding, there is lots of imagination and creative play happening within our home. Last evening Terah decided to see if she could fit into the stuffed animal carseat. She actually got herself all strapped in and then I heard her traipsing around saying "turtle shell...turtle shell." Here's what she had discovered:

Okay, enough videos for this post. I'll end with two other tidbits. One thing I'm enjoying recently is watching the girls' budding artistic abilities. They seem to be taking after their father in that arena. Take note at Kali's recent depiction of a zebra!  Both Kali and Alida are taking another semester of a homeschool art class at Larkin Arts in downtown Harrisonburg. This was their first week and they were full of enthusiasm before and after the class!

And, finally, we are (as I type this) enjoying the last popcorn seed testing of the season while we play Seven Up, Seven Down together. When we sat down to play and dealt out the Rook cards, Terah looked at her hand and piped up "Green is my trump and yellow is my partner." We laughed! She's been around a substantial amount of Rook playing, wouldn't you say?!

Look for another post before midnight with the scoop on our most recent deep clean. The sneak preview is: we are DONE and we still LOVE each other!!