Some things never go out of style

Like riding the vacuum cleaner to the moon. We totally used to do the same thing when I was a kid.

Snow Day!

This is what I woke up to this morning, and this is NOT a normal sight here in the Silicon Valley, even though we do live in the hills. Snow was falling and everything was covered in inches of snow. Beautiful! For the first time in my life I woke my kids up (rather than the other way around!) so they could see it while it was still falling.

Of course, the day's plans were immediately canceled, friends were called, and it was declared a snow day. We spent the entire morning alternately playing outside and sitting inside defrosting, drinking hot chocolate and eating coffee cake. Brett took a huge ice-chest full of snow down to Moses' preschool so the kids could play with it (I know, awesome, right?) and even skipped out on work to drag Moses and his buddy Keefe around the entire 3 acre property on a make-shift sled.

The roses that decided to bloom last week were a bit confused by the whole thing. Poor pretty things.
The boys were thrilled, Moses especially, who will tell you that his favorite time of the year is winter because we "go to the snow." He could hardly believe that the snow had come to us! I'm afraid I didn't even get many great pictures because I was too busy enjoying it all. I know I'll remember it all forever, though, and that's what really matters.

Finally a use for all those lentils.

Yesterday the baby took a real nap, leaving Moses and I some time to play. I'd been meaning to make bean bags for some time and here was our chance! It turned out to be a really kid-friendly activity and Moses had a blast. I let him pick out the fabrics, help trace the squares, and even help pin the fabric together in preparation for sewing.
His favorite part was filling the bean bags (he was very excited about helping me make a funnel out of paper). I had TONS of left-over lentils from one of my many failed we're-going-to-eat-more-fiber campaigns, and those made great bean-bag guts. We also used rice in one of the bags, and that worked well too.
A quick last zip of the sewing machine, and the three new toys were stitched up and ready to go. We played with them all day yesterday - turns out bean bags are one of the best toys on earth.
I highly recommend doing this even if you have very rudimentary sewing skills - the entire process is super fun and easy, and the end result is new toys!