Living with statues

I grew up with art around me, so I've been living with statues all my life. And my parents have great stories to tell about us living with statues: The questions whether a particular statue had just pooped in her pants, or the Christmas ornaments hung from another statue...

We got a lovely statue as a present a couple of years ago: two kids reading a book. And Liam and Anouk really identify with the statue. They put little things onto the book pages for the statue to see or they turn it around to see something in the room better.

Lately Liam's been weaving yarn around them - maybe to warm them? to bond them together?

I'll try to take pictures of the different interactions with the statue and post it here.

Snow day 2

It started snowing late in the afternoon and this morning we woke up to about 15-20 cm of snow:

 There was a sidewalk that needed to be shoveled:

We pulled the sled out and the kids enjoyed the snow in the yard:

(Yes, that's the little sister pulling the big brother!)

Giggles while pulled my mama:

Pulled through the neighbourhood by daddy:

We don't get cold snaps often, but when we do apparently we go a bit crazy with wrapping everyone and everything in knits. This is a yarn-bombed sign post:

At the park:

Sliding into a snow wall:

Fresh tracks to the swings:

And now a nice bowl of hot soup for everyone!

It doesn't snow often here - and when it does, we need to pack an entire Canadian winter into one day!

Snow day

It doesn't take a lot of snow for us here on the West Coast to feel the hardship of winter. We're used to rain and relatively warm weather, so snow always makes us feel like the rest of Canada...
February usually brings the first blossoms in the front yards in our neighbourhood, the first blossoms on trees, crocuses... This year the snow bells came right on cue for the beginning of February, but then the cold winds came in and today is not a first glimpse at spring, but a grey, cold and snowy winter day.
So we decided to turn up the heat and make it into a cozy home day with the possibility of playing in the snow after nap (this may not work out, the snow is constant, but not a lot, it's more like a sustained dusting - if you're reading this anywhere else in the Northern hemisphere you're laughing, but really, we don't do snow here!)

So what to do on a snow day?

Maybe work a bit more on this?

The kids played with the snow fairy - who was very cold since she only had her ear muffs on an no warm clothing, but then the rainbow fairy brought her a warm blanket, so all is well now:

And you gotta admit that nothing warms you up more than chocolate chip cookies right out of the oven:

Now everyone is under a warm blanket having a nap. We'll see what the afternoon brings...

Puppet show!

Over the past couple of days the kids have been having a great time putting on puppet shows for us:

Here's the sign to the puppet show - $1 admission price:

And here are some impressions of the shows from the past few performances:

Usually there were two parallel story lines: Trolls, fairies and unicorns with Liam:

And a farm story with Anouk:

Troll boy and Rumpelstilskin flying in a rowboat:

And the farmer's wife and the donkey flying high up into the sky:

In this performance the fairies were flying high in the air:

And here everyone was getting ready for a long journey on a big boat:

The second story line was dwindling a bit at this point:

The farmer standing next to the pussy willow tree:

Liam says the best thing about the puppet show was when everyone was on the boat sailing around.
For me the best part was the lightning storm when pieces of yellow yarn came down onto the boat as lightning.