Snow day - Side Cut Park

Today the kids and Alan were lucky enough to have a snow day.  Yep, they actually closed the University!  Lucky them!  Unfortuately for me it was only a level 2 emergency so I had to still go to work.  Since I didn't have to get the kids ready and take them anywhere I actually got to work almost an hour early than I normally do!  Mostly because I was going to leave early so I could come home and enjoy the snow with the family.  When I got home, we took a trip over to Side Cut metropark to go on the sledding hill.  The hill was pretty busy and we noticed immediately that someone had built some small jumps at the end of the hill.  Sounds fun, right?  Well it sure did for Zachary and he kept trying to go down and hit one of them. Sure enough he finallhy did.  When he launched off that jump, well, it didn't end well.  He landed face first.  Then he started bawling.  Poor kid!!  I thought for sure he had hurt his mouth, but what was actually giving him pain was his arm.  Seems he twisted it in some odd direction and it really hurt.  I thought at first he may have broken it, but he didn't and after sitting it out for awhile he as feeling up to one more "boring" run down the hill and a walk in the woods.

We had some fun playing in the woods. 

Watch out Alan, I sense a sneak attack!!!

Penguin Power!

The 2nd graders have to make a penguin for their science project.  Did I mention it had to be full size?  Sydney got the Chinstrap penguin, which is 27 inches tall.  For me it was a given that her penguin was going to be sewn out of fabric.  Fire up the glue gun, this will be fun!  (or maybe not)  We started by making a pattern and then cutting it out of old white t-shirts that we have.  Due to all of the technical conferences we used to attend, we have an ample amount of t-shirts to use, which was a plus.  After I sewed it on my sewing machine and flipped it around for it's grand reveal, Sydney initially informed me that it didn't look like the pattern.  And she didn't like it.  oh my.  Well after I convinced her that we didn't have enough plain white t-shirts (with no designs to show through on them) to make another one, she finally came around to liking it.
Then it was time to bring it to life!  We filled it up with left over stuffing and t-shirt fabric leftovers.  Sydney sewed up the opening.

First, he got his signature "strap" drawn on him.  We also needed to make him stand up so we glued him to a piece of cardboard and gave him some pink feet.  Then we designed some flippers and other features out of black felt.  Glued it all on him, and he was done!

We thought he turned out so cute that he is going to live in Zachary's room when he comes back from school.  Zachary can't wait!