The Search for Miss Direction: Diamonds are a Gatchel's Best Friend

Hmm, what to do on yet another "cold" day?? Giant cookies! Johnny Cash! Tea Party! Hey, this is the Gatchel's after all.

We did brave the cold for a bit for me to run over to JoAnn's for some supplies for a new project I'm working on as well as a couple of things for the upcoming states. They were troopers so I promised them a great morning when we got back.

After a quick snack, we decided to work some Arkansas magic into our day by using Hilary Clinton's Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe (minus the oats) to create some giant cookies via Kid Kitchen. She doesn't strike me as much of a baker, but I have to say the recipe turned out some amazing cookies. The kids loved them - Noah says that he wants them every day. But of course we couldn't just be content to chocolate chip cookies so we made them ginormous and stuffed them with the makings for 'smores. You'll have to check out the pictures to see if they were enjoyed... It was nice doing a Kid Kitchen with Noah again, he's one mean mixing machine!

Then Lightning McQueen and Cinderella dropped by for an impromptu tea party. They have been begging me to be able to do this for weeks, so I guess a 'cold' day is as good as any to dress up, get out the fine china and all the animals and enjoy. School be darned, I have had two happy kiddos on my hands today.

Tonight we continued on our Arkansas adventure by opening the mail we've received. I've got to say, this one makes me smile. My friend Deb, has a friend Judy who is on a great adventure across the country right now. Well Judy has some friends in Arkansas that she contacted to hook us up with mail this week. How cool is that, I feel like we need our own six degrees of separation or something at this point. Anyway, thanks to the Willis' in Mena, AR for the mail this week!

We also tried our hand at making edible diamonds tonight. As I mentioned yesterday Arkansas is the only place that you can actually mine for your own diamonds in the country. We taught the kiddos a little bit more about how diamonds were made and we're looking forward to growing (and eventually eating!) our own. We'll keep you posted on how they're doing.

On another note - we have a toilet! And a sink (not working yet, but it's in)! We have progress! There was no need to potty dance tonight, I am a happy woman :)

Not sure about tomorrow yet as the wind chills are supposed to be brutal again tonight so not sure if school will be in session or not. I have no doubt we'll come up with SOMETHING to do either way. The only downside is we are officially using extra days now. We've already gone through the allotted six calamity days for the school year now. Since they already go to June 13, I'm thinking that maybe this year they'll just keep them in school all summer if this weather keeps up. Good thing we don't have vacation planned 'til the first week of August! Anyways, we'll be back tomorrow! But until then...

Arkansas Fun Fact of the Day: The community of Mountain View is called the Folk Capital of America. The little town preserves the pioneer way of life and puts it on display for visitors at the Ozark Folk Center State Park from March through October.