It Was A Snow Day But We Didn't Even Play In The Snow

Today was an unexpected snow day, due to icy roads. The roads seemed fine to me when I drove Jordan to school, before I released school had been canceled. While I had some things I would have liked to get done while the boys were in school, it worked out well for us and we got some other things done. Thankfully I had things we could do today, because for a snow day it was too rainy to get outside and play in the snow.

Around here snow days = electronic days, so the boys were slow moving this morning. Jacob didn't even get up until 10 this morning. Once I pried the games from their hand we headed to Five Below so the boys could pick up some Christmas gifts to give. On the way there I talked with my mom who volunteered to take the boys shopping for gifts for me. It's always hard to help them shop when they already a gift for me in their baskets, they worry I might accidentally see me present. We started off with a $2 per person budget, and soon changed it to $3. Most of the things they kept choosing were five dollars and soon their budget jumped again. I want to teach them to learn to shop within their means, but just about everyone goes a little over budget around the holidays and I caved. They were for considerate of what each person might like or would use. This was a new concept for Jacob, he has a history of buying his brothers toys HE wants and after they open them and don't actually play with them, he takes them as his own.

After shopping we headed home to wrap their finds before snooping brother could discover what they got. I made sure we had enough tape, but of course we ran out of wrapping paper and had to double back to the store again.

I'm still only 3/4 done with Jacob's stocking, I got distracted with making scarves and throw blankets. The stocking they have from last year are really too young for them, Jacob refuses to use the Elmo one. I grabbed a couple felt stocking from the dollar store and some glitter from the craft store. They were given complete freedom to do what they wished on them. I only requested that they have their names on them. I plan on keeping these as a keepsake, as their writing style and artist abilities change so quickly. You can tell from Joey's that we have really been working on him writing smaller. I love that Jacob's is written on slant, and Jordan's letters are more uniformed. Jacob didn't really want to decorate the red portion on his (Glitter is for girls! *Sigh*) but decided to add dots after watching his brothers go to town making snowflakes. Oh course I made one too. I have a stocking my mom made for me when I was maybe Jacob's age, but I needed one that says Mom instead of my name. Having boys doesn't give me many opportunities to use glitter, I forgot how difficult it can be to clean it up. I believe hours there are probably still traces of glitter on and/or around our table.

We finally made our baked apples from our Fall Bucket list. They we delicious!! I have some very talented chefs, we enjoyed them with our movie tonight. We had attempted a few time the past couple of weeks and often time didn't allow for it and once someone ate our apples for snack. With technically hours to spare we complete our whole Bucket list! I'll have a wrap up of our Fall Bucket List up hopefully within the next couple of days. We have been planning our winter one but we still have tweaking to do on it before we post it, but it should be up soon.

A quick Orange Rhino update:

In spite of the full moon, I am very proud to report I completed my mini goal of not raising my voice for a whole week!!! I had been challenge plenty of time this past week also. My new goal is to finally get to and through day 11. Earlier this year when I first took the challenge I could repeated get to day 10 and blow it. My main goal is to make it 365 days straight without yelling, but I'm taking baby steps to reach it. It's a bad habit that I had got into a long time ago and one I can't wait to break (along with some other bad habits).

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