Crafting A "Plan B"

So as you may remember from Friday's post, I was whining about being sick and having to miss our church's annual Winter Retreat. I was hoping we could somehow salvage the weekend. Let me just put you out of your suspense by saying that our weekend was a success, despite our change in plans.

One thing that helped was that by late Friday afternoon a bunch of roads heading up to the retreat were closed and so we were getting e-mails from people who were planning to leave on Saturday morning instead. When we woke up on Saturday there was a ton of snow, roads were still closed, and so most people couldn't make it to the retreat anyways. I think maybe a third of the people were able to go. I was glad that we had realized earlier in the week that we weren't going rather than having to decide that the morning of.

Another thing that helped was that Sam and Rachel played for a long time in the play room and I got to sleep in. Yay! Dave claims that Rachel didn't actually throw the camera at him right after he took the picture below but I'm not sure I believe him :)

In the Fall we decided to subscribe to Chirp magazine for Sam and, in the last issue, it had a craft about making a Box Bed for your stuffed animal. Sam has been asking to do this craft for ages so we decided that Saturday was a good day to do it. The first step was finding boxes and painting them.

Both Sam and Rachel really enjoyed painting.

While the boxes were drying, Sam and Rachel played a game with their cars. I loved how carefully Sam had his emergency vehicles lined up on his ukelele for transporting. (Also Dave pointed out that of the 7 million pictures we took on Saturday, Sam rarely had a normal face.)

Then I noticed that on Sam's monthly classroom calendar one of his "Home Fun Ideas... (Not Homework!)" was to practice cutting paper snowflakes. So my imagination ran ahead of my energy and I decided that, since the kids had enjoyed painting so much, we should first paint paper to make our snowflakes out of. Because cutting snowflakes out of plain white paper is not enough, for some reason??? So out came the painting supplies again.

 

 

We even did one with all of our family's fingerprints on them. While the papers dried we all took baths/had showers and got clean. Since Rachel had accidentally painted a pink streak in Sam's hair, as well as various other mishaps, this was a very necessary step in the process :)

As if we hadn't already embarked on enough homemade adventures, we also decided Saturday night would be a good night to start a "Make Our Own Pizzas" tradition. So I attempted to make pizza crust for the first time and we gathered our toppings.

Sam loved putting his own toppings on, the crust worked out pretty well, and this Saturday night tradition will continue. Yay! Meanwhile, in the "Snowflake Factory" as Sam and Rachel called it (quite appropriately I might mention!), we were hard at work cutting out our snowflakes. Rachel was in charge of "cleaning up and not getting in the way of the scissors" and she did an excellent job :)

And a gazillion hours later we had 32 snowflakes strung on our Snowflake Garland and it was hanging in the playroom. Dave commented that a) it made our playroom look like a Kindergarten classroom and b) that it was ironic we decided to create even more snowflakes on a day which had so many outside already!

Sam immediately determined we should make a Heart Garland for Valentine's Day and Dave and I rejected the idea out of hand. However, I have to admit, I'm thinking one of Spring flowers could be really festive in a few months... (Note to self: STOP THE MADNESS!!!) After all, maybe by then we'll have recovered from the Snowflake Factory of 2014.

Yesterday we had a lower-key day. I think we were all worn out. Ha!

And that is how we salvaged our weekend. It was actually a lot of fun. And today Rachel is feeling better, I am feeling better, and we are back to normal life. I think.