Cold Weather Fun

We had a decent blizzard yesterday afternoon - at the time I was thinking I was so glad I was home! Then it got nasty cold and has been that way all day today. Again, I was glad we didn't have to go to town today! Instead we had the perfect cold weather day. My good friend Steffany had us over for breakfast (she lives maybe a mile away is all). Unfortunately I forgot to bring my camera, but it was definitely memorable. We had German pancakes (you bake it in a 9X13, and it puffs up huge!), bacon, fruit, oat drink (kids love it), coffee, and yummy jams. Kids got to play with her train set too. All in all a very fun morning.

We also made Valentine's Day cookies. This was a four-step process. At first I told Reder it took 3 steps - make dough (chill it), cookie-cutter and bake, then decorate. But, he informed me that there are actually 4 steps - you have to eat them!

Here we are making the dough first thing this morning, even in our jammies:

After we got home from Steff's we cut out fun Valentine's Day shapes. Granted we also did some Christmas ones too, but I couldn't talk them out of it. Strangely, amongst all my cookie cutters I found one that looked identical to Twinkers (complete with face!). Holy cow! What a treasure! So we made some of those too.

Tonight after dinner we did the decorating and eating. The three of us got into it! Ruby's favorite part was squeezing out gobs of glittery icing I bought in a tube. We also used powdered sugar frosting to cover big areas.

Our creations. In all they turned out great, and I must say they taste delicious too.

To top off our perfect day, we got to hear the hoot owl on our roof this evening. I put the dogs out and they were barking like crazy. I stuck my head out the door to yell at them and I heard the owl. I quickly went upstairs and told my train-playing family they need to listen (it's easiest to hear from our bathroom). Reder's face lit up when he heard it. Pretty neat.