Baby, It's Cold Outside

We've been experiencing some record-setting cold here in Champaign lately.  As in, olive-oil-freezes-inside-the-pantry cold.



With sub-zero highs and windchills in the -40 range, we've been keeping the girls inside the past few days.  Coming right on the end of Christmas break, everyone is going a little stir-crazy, so we've been trying to fill our days with fun activities.  On Sunday, Adam was excited to witness the second-largest playoff comeback in the history of the NFL to see the Colts beat the Chiefs.  He's told the girls several times that they've witnessed history (and they're about as excited as you would expect little girls to be about that).

Sunday afternoon we broke out one of the girls' new games, Doc McStuffins Operation.  Abby spent about 15 minutes before we started practicing how to get each of the pieces out.  After the Hungry Hungry Hippos slander, I was glad to have someone else win, but I did hear several times that she must be my daughter to try so hard to win.

We only ended up with about 6 inches of snow on Sunday (they had forecast 8-12). But no snow day is complete without bringing some of the snow inside, so our house is now full of these:

This morning we pulled out another craft project.  When the girls went to Camp Wilson this summer, they didn't have time to make their princess foam sticker pictures, so Grandma sent the kit home with us.  I'd been saving it for a special day, and today fit the bill!  The girls had so much fun making "cards."

I always love a good baking project, so we made pretzels for afternoon snack and dessert today.  The girls had so much fun coming up with different shapes to make their pretzels into.  We had hearts, cinnamon rolls, doughnuts, the letters N,O,R, and A, a braid, and a classic pretzel or two.  Since my girls are honey mustard fiends, we had a couple dipped in honey mustard at snack time, and saved the rest for dessert (after rolling them in cinnamon sugar, of course!)

This evening, Abby finished her first Lego set!  For Christmas, Adam picked out a Rapunzel tower Lego set, and the two of them have been working on it together.  They finished today - Abby was so excited!

I read about a couple cold weather experiments to try with your kids, so we tried a couple of those today, too.  Like just about everyone else in the midwest, we took some boiling water outside to watch it freeze before it hit the ground.  We also blew up a balloon and put it outside to watch it deflate, then re-inflate when we brought it back in.  Maybe tomorrow we'll freeze bubbles!