Friday, February 5, 2016

Snow Day 2016

We were supposed to get a blizzard with 5-9 inches of snow. We got 2.5 inches, but we still made the most of our snow day home from school. I only had two extra, older kids for the day so we got to have some special fun.



Breakfast in the living room. She's never eaten breakfast like this before, but felt the need to try it out for our "special snow day."


Snow days obviously require a fort to be built.


Round 1 of painting and crafting. They got very creative with their paper snowflakes.


Lego building (this took up most of their day) while they watched the Goosebumps movie. As a fan of the Goosebumps books when I was a kid, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie too.


Round 2 of coloring, painting, and crafting.




The kids helped me make homemade hot chocolate. I've been experimenting with hot chocolate recipes this winter and I do believe I just came up with a keeper.

  • 4 cups of 2% milk (feel free to use whole milk)
  • 1 bar bittersweet chocolate
  • 1 Hershey bar
  • 1 tsp. of cinnamon

Simmer on low for 30 minutes, stirring ever few minutes.

When the hot chocolate was done cooking, we had a Hot Chocolate Party (similar to our Hot Chocolate Bar). The kids loved putting their own toppings on (although I offered less than our Hot Chocolate Bar) and requested a Frozen Hot Chocolate Party when they were back for daycare this summer.





I kept the kids pretty busy and they got a little crazy at the end of the day. Elizabeth painted her Goldfish crackers and then asked "mom, can I eat these now or no?" Um, definitely no child.


She claims she also forgot about our no jumping on the couch rule. This was directly after painting her crackers.


A snow day requires soup for dinner. This is my favorite soup to make. I call it a Dump Soup because I dump whatever I can find in it. In this case it was ground beef, a bag of frozen mixed vegetables, spinach, green beans, zucchini, celery, beef broth, and 1 can of tomato sauce. In the past I've also added beans and/or potatoes. Dump it all together in the crock pot, throw in some spices (I opened up our spice cupboard and just started throwing things in), and cook it on low for 6-8 hours. Even the kids love this one!


Our last game for the day: I don't even know what it's called. Max set up something with the chairs and they tried to hit them with our snowballs from our Snowball Fight. If they hit a chair points were awarded. Minus one fall from the couch, the game was fun to take part in. Suspiciously the point system kept changing every time I took my turn...

We sure know how to keep busy during our snow days! I had wanted to get the kids outside to play in the fresh snow, but they were so happy and content playing indoors that I didn't want to mess that up!

Looking for more snow day activities? Check out our previous Snow Day posts: This Is How We Do A Snowy Day and Snow Day 2015.