40s Never Felt So Good

A couple weeks ago I heard on the radio that we were a few days away from breaking a record.  The record of having the most below zero days!!  We were close to 60 days below zero!!!  And we all felt it!  The cold was definitely wearing on us!

So when Monday came and it was upper 30s… and then upper 40s… we spent lots of time outside soaking it up!

Jesse had scraped all the snow/ice off our driveway the day before so we had a real blacktop driveway again.  Mallory couldn’t wait to get her bike out.

She remembered how to ride!  : )  I kept teasing her that she was going to forget because it had been so long since she rode her bike.

It was kind of hard to ride in all her snow gear so she didn’t ride very long.  Plus I think we need to move her seat up this year – she looked very crunched on it.

They thought it was so much fun to dig in the snow underneath the pine trees and find the branches that fell off.

Maggie even dug with them.

Then they attempted to build a snowman.  But I couldn’t help them because I didn’t put my snow gear on.

Max was over here torturing my struggling baby tree.  I yelled at him.  To which he replied “Our snowman needs arms”.

It was so funny watching them build this snowman by themselves.  They would literally throw on another snowball and the whole thing would crumble and fall over.

Then she would make another snowball.

Then she would get stuck!

Max found the arms off our old snowman that has melted and fell over.

They couldn’t get it and got mad.

Then we attempted our first walk of the season.  Which was an epic fail.  It was too close to lunch time.  And melt downs happened.  Mallory literally sat on the side of the road and cried.  Her legs were tired.  Max was being pushed his car… Max knows he is not much of a walker so he is taking the easy way and making us push him.  Well he refused to give Mallory a turn in the car so that she could rest her legs.  She cried.  Then we finally convinced Max to give her a turn and then he cried.  We made it home and went straight for lunch and then a nap to quickly follow!! 

After nap they started running around my kitchen island.  Which drives me crazy!  But it has been a hard winter and I know they need to get that out – so I let them do it for awhile.  Then I remembered hey – it is super nice outside… go get your water boots on and run outside! 

This time I just threw them in water boots, jackets and hats.  It was even warmer out then earlier. 

Mallory wanted to make hopscotch… and she is old enough this year to draw it herself and write the numbers in order!!!  So fun!  Yet so sad because she is growing up!  I had to help her with the number 2, 5 & 6.  Which she told me what number to write – I did not help her with what number came next. 

It felt so good to spend most of the day outside and remember what spring feels like!  We are ready for warmer weather to stick around for awhile!

Bear–The Mini Cow

Jesse’s Dad recently got another miniature cow.  The kids LOVE going to see this cow.  The last two they had the kids named them… but this one Grandpa named.  He named him Bear. 

It was finally warm enough this past Sunday that I finally went out to the barn to meet Bear.  There is something about barn pictures!  Can’t get enough of them!  Especially with the kids dressed in their church clothes in a dirty ‘ol poop filled barn!  Love it!

It was the middle of the day but I was having lighting issues with my phone – but I still got some fun shots.  Plus I was shaking so bad because I was still cold that I couldn’t hold my hands still enough to get a non-blurry picture. 

Grandpa dumped a special treat for Bear in the blue bin but Bear was taking his sweet little time coming to get it.  That Jesse and Mallory went to check on him to see if he was coming.

There he is!!  Sneaking around the corner!

Bear looks like a tiny buffalo – he is really cute!  I kind of want to change his name to Buffy – short for Buffalo.  He also has some massive spikey ear hair!!  When it gets warmer I’ll have to bring my big camera over and get some better pictures of him.

Frey Academy–Winter Style

I can’t take it!  I can’t take it!  I’m so done playing toys!  I don’t want to play toys for another day! 

Now my kids are super great players and are not bored with playing toys and pretend.  But I am!  And they want me to play with them sometimes.  But I’m so bored with it!

We have another month to two months left of this being locked inside.  So I took the plunge and ordered a school kit for us to do.  I follow a lot of homeschool blogs (homeschooling fascinates me – in a good way) and the one lady has preschoolers and she talks all the time about Mother Goose Time.  I’ve been on the website a 100 times and I think about buying it… and then I don’t.  Well – I did it this time! 

I re-arranged the playroom and moved some toys out so that we could have a Mother Goose Time Corner.  The kids were so excited – but mostly I was the most excited!

It arrived yesterday and I went to town during nap assembling my little space.  Mother Goose Time is a monthly subscription and it is a theme, a color, 2 letters, a shape, 2 numbers, a country, and a feeling each month. 

I went ahead and ordered the March one even though it is very much spring related and we have 9,000 feet of snow on the ground and won’t know spring until May.  But we are learning all about the pond this month!

The best part is all the crafts are planned.  The supplies are all there.  (I just have to have tape, colors, markers, glue, stapler, paint, etc on hand.)  They have games for you to play.  It comes with music cds – which is a huge hit for Max.  He loves to sing the silly songs.  It has science projects.  It is has everything.  A lesson plan even!

We did our first day today.  The kids called me Mrs. Hauser (Mallory’s teacher) the whole time.  They thought we were playing pretend school.

It was all about turtles today.  They got to make a turtle.

Their finished turtles!

The turtles were a HUGE hit!  They loved them and played with them the rest of the day! 

We also learned about the color purple and diamonds.  Here they are pretending to be in a pond and the diamonds are bugs.  They have to catch a bug with the tweezers and feed the animals we have around the pond.

We had cards with animals on them – but Max put a duck in our pond.  Then they got to the end and realized that they never fed the duck any bugs.  So Mallory fed the duck a bug.

Max was loving this!!  They also had to sort the bugs by color and put them with the animal that was the same color as the bug.

It took maybe an hour to do a full days projects that they have planned.  But we are moving pretty quickly.  This is basically for daycares… but they sell to moms too. 

When it was all over they wanted to keep going – so we did another day and learned about snakes.

It was a huge hit!  For both the kids and even me!  I’m looking forward to the next day already!