Of Sickness and Snow

The Moo has been sick all weekend, so it as been difficult coming up with things for her do beyond watching endless reruns of Fetch with Ruff Ruffman (excellent show but Mom can only take so much). Physically, she has not been up for much, so we opted for art projects. The slide show below shows our little Kandinsky's at work - the Moo decided that she would paint the sunset, and opted to first paint her entire canvas orange and then add different colors to reflect the streaks of light one sees at sunset. She also added a few clouds. I think it looks beautiful and reflects the careful though she put into it. I am not sure what the Bean was actually intending to paint, but I love the end result.


If you watch the slideshow, be sure to pause or slow it down when you reach the Gingerbread lure. Last week, the Moo's Kindergarten class read the story of the gingerbread man and baked gingerbread cookies. They left the cookies to cool overnight, but when they got back to school the next morning, the classroom was ransacked and the cookies had escaped and there were little flour footsteps all over the school!! None of the footsteps led outside, so the kids determined that the cookies were still in the building. The teachers requested that the children make traps over the weekend so that they could recapture the runaway cookies this week.

The Moo was not happy about making a trap; she told me that that was cruel and might scare her "ginger." I was a bit flustered, noting to her that we had to do something to complete her homework assignment. She said that she wanted to make a bed, because the ginger would be tired from running around and would need a place to rest. Mom and Dad thought that was a great idea, so Dad and the Moo assembled a bed from plywood, which the Moo painted and decorated to look like a gingerbread house because, of course, that is where gingers live. Dad then rigged the lure (we learned very quickly that we got in trouble if we called it a trap) to keep the ginger in once it entered. There is a little bell on the inside by the head of the bed, and the Moo made a sign for it that says "Ring for service." When the ginger rings the bell, a wood square in the back falls, releasing a weight that then pulls up the sides of the bed, trapping the ginger inside (or, as we explained to the Moo, giving the ginger a nice dark place to sleep in peace). It's pretty neat and the Moo is excited about showing her design to her class.

Finally, just in time for tomorrow's inauguration we have been inundated with snow. I took a few pictures of the beginning of the storm, but it is nothing compared to how hard things are falling right now. There was no mention of snow on the news this morning, so I am not sure how hard it is expected to fall or how long it is expected to stick around, but the girls are thrilled. Luckily I have tomorrow off anyway, in case the schools are closed, but this has pretty much ended any thoughts I had about taking the girls downtown for the ceremony tomorrow -- I think we will say home and watch this moment on TV.