Morning Views…and a Word Family

The weather is the weather.  That’s my philosophy.  You can’t do anything to change it…it comes and goes, changes again and again, and is unpredictable and a bit fickle…much like the two year old munchkin boy we love so much around here.  There is no real point in complaining about it…so we try our best to embrace it.  The arrival of nearly two feet of snow…and oh-so-much higher drifts is a magical thing.  (I will admit the snow removal process that comes with this much snow is a bit less magical…though having a husband home all day to pretty much handle the situation on  his own is absolutely magical!!!)

The heaps and heaps of sparkly white fluffy snow has turned out yard into a whole new land.  We look at it with new eyes, see shapes we hadn’t noticed before, and rediscover landmarks under their thick blankets.  For me, the biggest challenge with New England winters is not the snow, or the temperature, or the driving conditions.  It’s the gray.  The thick clouds that bring snow again and again and again block out the suns rays and leave us stranded in a sea of white and gray.  With such a storm as we saw yesterday I fully expected a good stretch of gray was in the forecast.  Not so.  I awoke this morning to bright sunlight creating a blinding light outside reflecting off all the snow.  Beautiful clear blue skies are overhead.  Such a surprise is energizing and revitalizing.  Not to mention stunningly beautiful.  What I had thought would be a cozy indoors sort of day with a few outdoor adventures, is turning into an outdoors sort of day with a few indoor adventures!  In fact I might even dig out our mailbox that the plows buried. 

On a separate note there are a few other things I wanted to share with you.  First…here’s the apron I altered for the Spence.  Ruffles and gathers weren’t going to cut it for the little man cub so I folded and tucked and block printed a few trucks onto the hem.  Love!

While making a string of rhyming words to help us discover the spelling of a word in a journal writing activity, we created our own little word family.  Hands-on, visual, and effective, I see lots more of these in our future.  After all…we need a Mom, a Dad, and a little brother too she insists.  I’m embarrassed to say it took me a two tries to make the string of little girls.  I’m  not sure the last time I had tried…yikes!  I cut a 11” x 17” lengthwise and folded it accordian style, and cut out my girls making sure to leave the folds uncut on the hands an dress hem.