Snow Day

we've been struggling to get out of the house lately. the little one has switched to a 2-nap schedule, and his older brothers still take one of their own. i love that the little guy sleeps for more than 45 minutes at a time, but the logistics of this schedule are making things a bit difficult to do much of anything besides sit at home.

you see, about the time the twins are done with breakfast, the baby goes down for his first nap. he sleeps until, oh, around the time the kiddos are finishing up lunch and heading upstairs for their nap. then the tiny man stays awake for a few hours before his next nap, which begins just before his brothers wake up.

all of this means that -- if i have any intention of keeping a schedule -- there are very few hours in the day when everyone is awake.

and i don't know about your children, but mine turn into some pretty nasty beasts when their schedules are disrupted -- and THAT is no fun for ANYONE.

so today, during little l's morning slumber, the rest of us got bundled up and headed out back to play in the snow. w had been begging to build a snowman for days on end.

several inches of snow in the backyard...a small snowman should not be a problem before we get too cold to enjoy ourselves, right? so here's our snowman (the boys opted to eat the eyes and nose rather than give our "man" a face).

being from the midwest, i'm used to good packing snow. you know, the stuff that's great for snowball fights, snow forts, and snowmen.

i remembered where i live when we started to build our snowman and discovered that it was next to impossible to actually form a ball with the fluff that covered our back yard.

my boys, though, had no concept of the difference between powder and packing snow and continued to insist on a snowman.

thankfully, they were quite content with a snow midget.