Snow, Painting, Popcorn

I suppose I only have myself to blame for this, but I *hate* the snow and the cold.  I know, I know, it's what you get when you live in NE Ohio.  But truly, I could live the rest of my life with no snow and be no sadder for it.  Unfortunately for my girlies, this means we don't get out much in the winter.  I mean, we go from house to garage to get in the car, and then run from the car to our destination...but we don't really go out to play.  I just hate being cold, really.  But, the other day Michael left before the bulk of the snow hit, and I knew that I had to shovel the driveway before I'd be able to leave for preschool drop-off (and believe me, I contemplated taking a day off from preschool! :)).  So I bundled the kiddos and we trekked outside.  You will notice that Maya is wearing a fancy coat and rain boots.  This is because her snowboots and ski coat were in Michael's car ~ 10 parenting points for me!

Turns out Maya did not get my hate of snow!  She played and played and would have stayed out there for WAY longer than the *maybe* 15 minutes it took for Charlotte to go from "Mommy I really don't like the snow" to complete-meltdown-I-will-fall-over-and-not-get-back-up.  So turns out Charlotte and I share the same distastes :P

The following picture pretty much sums up how they each felt about the whole situation:

Fortunately after preschool that day, we got to hang out with Sierra, Isaac, and "I love the snow more than life itself" Isabella.  Maya and Isabella gladly tromped through the waist deep snow, ate lots of snow, went down the snowy slide into a snowdrift, and basically stayed outside until Sierra and I forced them in!

*****

If you've been reading my blog for very long, you'll know that I'm, well, a bit of a freak when it comes to being messy.  Maya is very...um...artistic.  Do you remember this:

Or this?

Or this?

Maybe even this:

So you can understand my trepidation when it came time to paint the balloons we paper mached *before* Christmas.  But, I got tired of seeing them sitting there all alone and not colorful on the counter, so last night Michael and I took the plunge and set up the paints (which are stored high, high up) for the girlies.  Maya did surprisingly well!  I really was impressed with her!  Charlotte, too, was very into the whole painting thing.  Might have to do that more often!

Finally, Maya and Charlotte had their first experience making popcorn in the Whirly Popper for movie night on Saturday!  They both thought it was pretty fantastic (even though Charlotte didn't get to eat any!) and Maya has already requested to do it again.

Two more pictures.  Maya "on my way to ballet" :)

Charlotte being cute, trying to figure out the nesting barrels: