Happy Birthday, Emma!

Our sweet, sweet Emma has turned 5! It's so hard to believe... She's growing up so quickly.

When we asked her what kind of cake she wanted, she said, "A butterfly cake." So I asked if she wanted a flower-shaped cake with butterflies on it or a cake with a big butterfly on it and she picked the big butterfly, so that's what I made. :)

As is our tradition, the kids made her a beautiful banner

And Olivia enhanced the whole room with litle hearts, flowers and butterflies on the walls.

Emma's one big gift was to go to a 3-day Snow Princess Dance Camp.

The camp was for 3- to 5-year olds and focused more on gross motor movements than the finer points of dance. So they did big arm movements,

skipping,

making themselves a snowball,

and then a snowflake.

(I'm not sure what this was besides an ab workout...:)

They swayed

and hopped

and ran around and froze when the music stopped.

Then they twirled

and played with the parachute.

Our sweet Snow Princess!

SNOW!

If there's one thing we really hope for each year, it's one good snowstorm. And this year, we got it!

It was questionable whether we'd even get anything right up to the night it was supposed to start.

But it did start and it kept coming down!

The next morning, we had 9 inches on the ground and it was still snowing pretty hard as times. By the time it was over, we had a little over 10 inches, which is pretty significant for us.

The chickens weren't particularly thrilled with the snow.

But the kids were. :) Irene was so excited to get to go out in it; a far cry from last year, for sure.

Emma, too, was raring to go when she saw the whole world turned white.

The did some sledding in the front yard.

Olivia went over to the big hill and did a little there.

Even Nukkah got into the action by escaping and running like a mad dog all around the park.

It was just so pretty...However it was freezing cold, so staying outside took some serious determination.

Olivia wanted to try her hand at shoveling. It didn't last long. :) 

Because it stayed cold (like 10-20 degrees for highs) for a couple of days, the snow wasn't any good for making snowballs or snowmen. However, a couple days later, the sun came out and softened the snow enough to make a couple of pretty good snowmen in the yard.

They didn't last long, tho. the very next day, we found the bits and pieces all on the ground as their occupants had melted swiftly away. 

Yard Work

Sometimes, I can manage to get the kids to actually do some work around the yard.

This happened to be one of those days. We'd had a few windy days and there were limbs all over the yard, so I offered them each $1 an hour to pick up sticks and limbs in the yard.

They managed to fill the trailer to be taken to the dump, so it was worth the $6 to get them to do the work.