Who's Gonna Let a Little Snow Stop 'em?

Mother Nature refused to accept my trip into the Land of Denial yesterday and left us a wonderful present of about six inches of snow by the middle of this afternoon.  Given how the snow was to fall all day and the amount predicted I wasn't in the least bit surprised to find that I had both kiddos home with me for the day.  As an added bonus, I had Grant as well!  He prepared and brought his stuff home yesterday and was able to spend the day camped out in our living room working from here.  My antsy about driving in this mess self was happy to have him.

And what a day it's been!  I am WIPED out.  I guess 7 loads of laundry, surprise french toast, making Biscochitos in Kid Kitchen with my favorite duo, creating hot air balloons with same duo, helping them throw and host a tea party, shoveling a ridiculous amount of snow, work for a couple of hours, trying my hand at making Pesole and wrapping up the evening with a movie on the International Balloon festival will do that to a girl!  I took a whole mess of pictures today so I'm going to let them show (with my captions) how awesome our day was.

As of right now, I think it's a pretty safe bet that they'll have school tomorrow, so it'll be that, a PTA Board meeting, some slow cooker Santa Fe chicken and a trip to the library for the "One School, One Book" night for Beechview to jam into tomorrow.  Oh and our coloring state, can't forget that!  Plus I'm starting to get things thought about and organized for our trip to Illinois this weekend, so like usual it'll be a full one :)  So until then...

New Mexico Fun Fact of the Day:  The word "Pueblo" is used to describe a group of people, a town, or an architectural style. There are 19 Pueblo groups that speak 4 distinct languages. The Pueblo people of the southwest have lived in the same location longer than any other culture in the Nation.

The Dynamic Duo ready for some Kid Kitchen

I was so glad to have Noah home today to join us.  I miss cooking with him!

Trying to sift the flour

Large and in charge (of the mixer at least)

Monkey see...

Cutting out the Biscohitos

They are traditionally in the shape of a fleur de lis, but we made do with a cross shape

Sprinkling the cinnamon sugar on before baking

Ready for the oven.  The biscochito is actually the State Cookie of New Mexico

Taking a snack to Daddy

And earning one themselves

Getting started on our hot air balloons

Mikayla deciding which pieces should be next to each other

Kristina - I totally thought of you today as I pulled out a mess of 8x8 patterned scrapbook paper for them to choose from and thought "gee, so glad this is going to good use" Knew you'd appreciate the sentiment ;-p

They insisted on decorating the baskets

Our finished hot air balloons!

I hung them in the kitchen for all to see

Then we had to have a tea party to celebrate how good they'd been (and not bothered Daddy!) all morning.  I even let them pick one of my loose teas to try.

Lunch, tea and a ton of stuffed animals - they were happy kiddos

I shoveled for awhile in the afternoon and then post-nap Grant and Noah went outside for a bit to finish it up.  That meant a bath before dinner to warm back up for while and as an added bonus Grant read them today's chapter from "The Mouse and the Motorcycle" so Noah will be all caught up for school tomorrow

Land of Enchantment Pesole - I wasn't quite sure how this was going to go over or if it would be too spicy for them, but everyone here loved this.  In fact, the recipe said it served 5 and I had pretty much no leftovers tonight.

Movie time!  We are kind of enamored with the Hot Air Balloon Festival