Saturday was taken up with shovelling, dressing children for playing in the snow, reminding children to remove their boots near the door least they track snow, and being thankful our hot water at least worked though the heat didn’t and the electric went out at 8:30 on Friday night.
Ben had been hired by our neighbor to shovel out their drive and walkway – they left Friday to ski. I wasn’t feeling well, having been accidentally glutened the night before, which oddly feels much worse now that I don’t usually eat gluten. Dan told me to take it easy, so I took a candle lit bath, got dressed, and was tidying up the kitchen, when Ben walked in with a box of Joe from Dunkin Doughnuts. I sure cheered up! We fixed the coffees and he carried them to the neighbors on a cookie tray. I think the neighborhood cheered up at that moment.
The little kids asked for hot coffee too, so I pulled out the espresso cups for little kid sized coffee – it was the only hot thing available, and even with cream and sugar, most of them couldn’t drink it. “What do grownups like about this stuff?”
Ben set out again in search of shovels, wearing his swim goggles against the snow in the wind.
M built snow tunnels with the neighbor kids. At one point it collapsed on him. Dan took a picture before hauling him out.
When the children got cold, I took them inside. The boys made honey milk balls from the More with Less coookbook – no bake, no cook, just stir pantry ingredients and you get a high protein, high fat, high sugar candy with fiber. Lovey for a snowy day without heat or electricity. My middle floor neighbor send down some grapes. As the boys made candy/cookies, I taught the girls how to make those icles/dimensional snowflakes. We had to stop when we ran out of tape and staples. It got a bit hectic when the boys needed percentage of honey consultation at the same moment the three little girls wanted to know exactly how to fold the paper, but we finished our projects, didn’t get peanutbutter on the paper, and ate our snack. We sent a plate out to the Dads for another shovel break too. They had reached the spot where they wanted cold water or orange juice because they were so hot.
The kids curled up in blankets after that as the thermometer said the house was 56 degrees. I pulled out our red books for stories, but had a big trouble finding something the 4 year olds would sit still for, and the boys and girls would agree on. So the neighbors went home for cold lunch. I served apple slices with cheese, carrots, broccoli and ranch dip. Behold the power of ranch dip – the carrots all disappeared.
The power returned at 3PM. I was somewhat surprised and a bit disappointed that the internet was relatively quiet when I got to connect with it again, but when you are waiting to see your name in print, its easy to feel a bit like nothing ever happens.
We all decided to help Ben dig at the neighbor’s house. Our other neighbor, Patty came by with her snow blower, which gave us all a good start.
Dan and Ben got popcorn and soda and watched Mephis Belle when they were done.
Sunday church was closed, so Dan added stairs to the huge snow pile for K to climb on.
