Two bonuses today:
  1.  No school, so I got to sleep in!!
  2.  Woke up to a surprise snow, with snow still falling in big flakes for a large part of the day.

I went out and measured a little while before it stopped and it was 3 1/2 inches on the road.

The kids woke up and played video games, and then out to play in the snow.  The boys played hide and seek, the girls took a long bath and played in the water, we lit the pellet stove, and I happily spent the day straightening up from the weekend.

Zion, showing me a knit hackeysack ball whose little styrofoam balls had spilled out through a leak before he taped it shut.  "Mom, I wish this could grow back together. (Pause.) And I wish that gardens could grow in the winter. (Pause.) And I wish that when it was snowing, we could pray and ask for God to make it warm, and He would make it warm and the snow wouldn't melt."

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Zion: Why did the chicken cross the road?
Layla: To get her eggs?
Zion: (pause) Because the farmer had all the eggs and she wanted to find out which one was hers...ehhh heh heh heh!!!
Mother in front seat: forehead wrinkle

Zion:  Knock knock
Layla:  Who's there?
Zion:  You
Layla: You who?
Zion:  It's fun - it's a joke.
Layla: appreciative laugh
Mother in front seat:  confused blink

The evolving of a child's sense of humor is a mysterious thing.  Especially knock knock jokes.  What. At certain ages, all of my kids over the years have roared with laughter at knock knock jokes that...just...they're just not getting the point yet.

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I had a really fun day yesterday.  Zion had a doctor's appointment in Brooklyn, NY to consult with a doctor there regarding some lingering effects that strep has had on him.  I had never been to NYC before this, and to me, Brooklyn classifies as close enough!  :)  We left a little before 8 in the morning to get there for our 12:00 appointment, and drove in through a section that was obviously a ethnically chinese area, with blocks and blocks of stores with signs in Chinese, to get to the area where we wanted to go, which was a doctor's office in an orthodox Jew area, I loved seeing all of the cultural dynamics, all the people around, and was fascinated with what it's like to drive in a place where cars are double parked everywhere on the street.  It was an issue finding a place to park, and after several tries and some helpful people, I successfully manuvered our little car into a little tiny parking spot, fed the parking meter, and Zion and I took off for our appointment with a very nice doctor a few blocks away.

When we returned to our car, Zion wanted to check out a comic book and video game store on the street next to us, because...obviously.  :D  He got some souvenir Pokemon cards and promptly divided them in half and gave me half to play a game he made up using points on the cards.