Iced Over

We were home again today, and the cabin fever definitely set in. By this afternoon the kids were feeling a bit testy and I was totally going stir crazy. I have really loved spending so much time with the kids and I have surprised myself with how relaxed I've been about it. If we could actually leave the house, things would be a million times better. The roads are still completely iced over absolutely everywhere and are expected to be this way for two more days!

I finally ventured out of the house long enough to get the mail and take some pics. Jon said the drive home last night was the worst drive he's ever had. It's crazy out there! I don't know yet if Harper's school will be open tomorrow. I'm thinking even if it's not, I'll try to go to work in the morning. If the drive is bad, I have no problem turning around and coming home. But we'll see.

Some of our pipes have frozen, and we are praying and hoping with all we have that they don't burst. The kids' bathtub barely runs any water, and the cold water in our tub and Jon's sink doesn't run at all. We also noticed we had frost on the INSIDE of our bathroom window this morning, leading us to believe we have a serious insulation problem. Fabulous.

I decided to cook an early dinner because bathtime is always a favorite around here, so I figured it was a good way to kill some time and keep them happy. I had forgotten we only had one bathtub, so I had to quickly clean ours up (it never gets used), and turned on the steaming hot water. I began taking large cup fulls of cold water from my sink and pouring it in, but realized that was going to take a while and the kids were getting antsy. An inspired idea hit me, and I grabbed the entire ice cube container from the freezer and dumped them all in. Harper was watching me and said "whoooa!" once I was done, but she seemed to enjoy seeing ice cubes floating all around the bathtub. It worked great!

Today Harper needed an early nap, which is not a good start to the day. I tried starting to play a game of hide and seek with her stuff animals, but she had a meltdown as we found the very first one, so it was off to bed she went. Things improved a little after that, but she really seemed like she needs a change of scenery. Me too, girl.

Jasper is getting more interested in pulling himself up and crusing these days (finally!), so we worked with him on that today and made a lot of progress. I got him to start using his walker, which was very exciting. And this morning as I was vacuuming, he seemed very interested in the vacuum, so I decided to see if he would enjoy riding it as much as his sister did. While he didn't crack much of a smile, he didn't whine or cry which says a lot. And once I pulled him off, he kept reaching back over to grab at the vacuum until I moved away. It was pretty cute and we all got a good laugh out of continuing the tradition of our vacuum-riding children.

The frost on the inside.

Our street.

Jasper on the vacuum.

Look at me!

Ice cubes in the bath.

Having a blast in the tub.