Even in Ithaca, snow closes things down.

Today is a snow day in Ithaca. Even in Ithaca, things start to close down when there's severe weather warnings. Public schools have been canceled and the YMCA closed for the day. But the trusty TCAT bus system is up and running! Thank goodness, we don't all have to take our husbands to and from school in the snow, we get to let the crazy bus drivers do it instead! It's been snowing since we got up this morning, and is not supposed to stop anytime soon. It wasn't really supposed to start snowing until this afternoon, but we already have probably over 6" of new snow, on top of what was already there. We'll see how long it will take to dig our van out, the next time we need to go somewhere. Especially once it's been plowed around and buried more, that will be a fun job that will hopefully need doing when the husband is around.

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Snow

Steady snow will fall through early evening. Cloudy with temperatures steady in the upper 20s. Winds NW at 15 to 20 mph. Additional snowfall of 2 to 3 inches through 8pm.

Tonight

Heavy Snow / Wind

Low

25° F

Precip: 100%

Tomorrow

Snow Shower

High

32° F

Precip: 50%

Tomorrow Night

Light Snow

Low

29° F

Precip: 70%

Like I said, I don't know what they're talking about, only 2-3 inches by 8pm, we already had over 6 inches of new snow by lunch time. What you can't see is that in the next 36 hours, it doesn't really show any signs of stopping.

This morning we bundled up and went out to play in the snow with some friends. We even collected clean snowfall in a bowl and made it into vanilla ice cream for all the kids. My cute friend, Katie found the recipe and the brought stuff out to do it with. The kids all thought it was pretty great and they each got to help stir it.

As you can see Evelyn, thoroughly enjoyed it! (I think she got seconds and thirds and... until it was gone.)

The above picture is what you'll get if you ask Allison to smile for a picture. Or just if you ask her to smile. She'll squint her eyes shut as hard as she can. My nephew used to do this and I think it's so funny. Not sure why kids think that is what smiling is, but I still think it's cute. The below picture is what you'll get if you just catch her smiling on her own. I love her smile. It's so contagious!

She's showing me a scoop of her ice cream before shoving it in her mouth.

This is all the kids that were out playing in the snow with us when we made the ice cream. We just had a bowl full of ice cream, added a can of sweetened condensed milk and some vanilla. Once that had reduced the bowl of snow by half it was too sweet so we stirred in more snow. It turned out pretty good.

When I was younger, we made snow ice cream up at my grandpa's cabin in Idaho. There was always plenty of snow available, since there was always between 2 and 4 feet. We made snow-ice cream by mixing the snow with sugar and vanilla.

Probably turns out pretty similar either way.

Yeah, I know, Allison is not being modest, but she just had a very cute smile and was having so much fun, that I'm going to post it anyway. I will not post the full sized picture, because Evelyn's body in it too, and because all of Evelyn's clothes came off before the project. I usually have the girls take their shirts off before painting, or using markers, or glue, just so I don't have to deal with the spots on their shirts. It's a lot easier to wash a tummy off than a shirt. And if the marker or whatever doesn't really come off their tummy, just put their clean shirt back on and cover it up. Since Evelyn was wearing a dress, when she "took her shirt off" for the project, she was left with only underwear on. So all you get to see of her is her arm, sorry.

I have no idea why a few of their fingernails look black, I promise they're all just pink and I don't paint my daughters fingernails black, ever!

I'll have you know that once I took this picture, Allison was done and only interested in pouring all the colored noodles onto her paper to see what would happen to stick in the glue. I was actually impressed with how far she got on the project. Her craft/art attention span is finally starting to lengthen a little. It's been nice, now that we've been able to do a few more fun projects and she doesn't terrorize Evelyn quite as much (except when she said all the orange ones were hers and would not share with Evelyn). Up until a few months ago, I could not even let Evelyn color with Allison near by. She'd just terrorize and throw all the crayons on the floor and try to color on Evelyn's paper. Not that she doesn't still do that, she just will usually color nicely for a few minutes before doing that now. Painting still does not last more than 1-2 minutes. Hopefully soon, they'll really enjoy sitting down (yes, sitting down, would be nice) together and working on projects for a good long while.

Evelyn had a lot of fun with this and finished her "big E" as she called it, and wanted to do a "D and an A and another D for dad". She only got the D page finished by the time Scott got home for dinner.

Who knew that a little food coloring and water could make plane white-ish pasta so much more fun to play with. The girls loved having so many different colors.

To color the pasta, I just used plastic cups and added some food coloring and cold water. I let them each soak for only a couple minutes. Then I rinsed them and let them sit in the strainer for a minute. I had a cookie sheet lined with news paper and then a paper towel. After the pasta had drained for a minute I dumped it onto the prepared pan and just let it dry until morning when I gathered them all up and put them in baggies. After doing this, I went to the store and bought some more fun shapes of pasta to color and use for projects. I got some Rigatoni that will be great to make necklaces out of. Some fun spiral noodles, some regular shells and some others. I'll color them all and just have them ready for different projects. You know, since we spend quite a bit of time, at home, and inside these days. You can only fully bundle the kids up to play in the snow so often, which still leaves a lot of time to fill.

Any other good or creative fun ideas we should do?