Day 3.363: Forty!

When I was growing up, my desires for a white Christmas were almost always disappointed, but I would fairly regularly have a 'white' Birthday. Today was another one - we had a good six inches during yesterday and overnight.  Fortunately, the snow was basically done by this morning.

The day was spent getting ready for a party this evening. We had a quiz with 40 questions (about the number 40, 1971 and other people turning 40 this year), a cake with 40 M&Ms around the outside (that we never got out in the end) and balloons and the door hangings advertising my landmark.

I'd like to say we had 40 people here - but I think we topped 50. People ate, drank, chatted, played Kinect games (eventually the adults got a look-in), sat by the fire, were thrilled or baffled by my taste in music...

Exile #2 worked incredibly hard to bring it all together and, it turned out, to bring distant friends and family to be part of it through these emailed-and-printed greetings from the UK, New Zealand and elsewhere in the US. So cool.

Thanks to everyone who sent greetings, came to the party, wrote on my facebook wall...and generally gave me a great day today - all thoroughly appreciated!

Day 3.362: Thirty-something

I had the day off work today to prepare for an event tomorrow. More of that in due course. We had a pretty good day and got a lot done.

It has been snowing lightly but steadily since we got up this morning and I went out to do a second shovelling a little while ago it was very pretty indeed. Now it's time for this thirty-something to go to bed!

Day 3.361: Can't catch me!

As has become her habit, Exile #2 made our crackers for Christmas Day. She made hats, found jokes amongst a list of 'ten worst cracker jokes' and bought some little gifts. Exile #3's was a rather small toy gingerbread man.

However, it was labelled with the tantalising promise that if placed in water it would swell up to six times its original size.  So, she dropped it in the jug of water.

The girls watched hopefully.  Nothing happened.  We rechecked the instructions.  It turned out the transformation was going to take up to ten days!


And sure enough - here it is ten days later.

It's now drying out and shrinking again - so the slow fun goes on and on.

Day 3.360: School photos

I'm literally 'mailing this one in' as the blogger interface seems problematic this evening.

When we got the girls' photos back from school (slightly disappointingly we did not know about re-take day!) I decided that it was about time that E5N1 had one too.  Since his preschool is too small to organise such a thing, I decided to take it myself.

Now, I know I had time on my side (and only one child to deal with) - but frankly I'm rather happy with the result.

UPDATE:
A asked about the haircut - it was indeed very recent. This is from the day before (this is all back in early December)

Day 3.359: Ice sculpture

Looking for shapes in clouds is so last-continent. Now I'm all about the ice. I particularly like the 'ship' apparently fighting its way up Normanskill.