Stormy No School Day

Thanks to Hurricane Sandy, which so far has produced nothing but light rain, both school AND swim lessons are cancelled for today.  Julia, who whole-heartedly loves going to both activities, questioned the reasoning behind the school cancellation.

JULIA: Well, Mama, why WAS school cancelled today?  Is it because the kids would be, like, all cooped up inside the school all day, and because the kids would be, like, all FOCUSED on the storm and looking out the window and stuff?

I actually think that's a pretty fair description of why there's no school today.

In order to make up for missing school, Julia put together her own school session at home, and added the double bonus of hurricane protection, as she and Madeleine attended school inside their home-made fort:

What a nice, sturdy fort made of blankets and chairs.  There's NO way a hurricane could blow that over.

While in school, Julia diligently worked on her reading skills, reading books aloud to Madeleine:



Julia took a break from reading to announce it was snack time, which presented a difficult dilemma for both girls: "Brave" fruit snacks or Disney Princess fruit snacks?  Oh, what a hard choice.  Madeleine originally went for "Brave," but then changed her mind when she realized her sister was eating princesses.  However, that didn't stop Madeleine from giving me a whole synopsis of the movie "Brave."  Given that we saw it back in July, I'm awfully surprised at how much she remembers about it.



To further keep ourselves entertained as we are house-bound for the day, the girls and I decided to make some Halloween cookies with the brand new cookie cutters I bought.  Julia was quick to delightedly declare what objects the cookie cutters represented, even if her interpretations of the various shapes weren't always quite on target.

"A dinosaur!"

"A tomato!"

"A moon!"  (At least she got that one right.)

The girls had so much fun cutting out cookie shapes that it was an utter travesty, in Madeleine's mind, when we were finally out of dough.  It was absolutely necessary for her to wrap her arms around my leg, holding the black cat cutter, and sob into my thigh, while I was washing dishes, about the injustice of the whole situation.  "But I just really need to make another caaaaaaat!" she lamented.  It's a tough life, Madeleine.  Sometimes you just run outta dough.  What can you do??

Julia has also added to the Halloween spirit by adding yet more taped-up pictures to our walls and door frame.  Below are the spooooky Haunted House decorations she drew:

Wooooh!  Scaaary!  Behold: a window (top), a JAIL WINDOW (middle), and a door (bottom.)  Yikes.  I don't know if I can handle this.  I might be too freaked out by these images to keep them hanging on my door frame.

And talk about spooky.  Take a look at these mean and scary jack-o-lanterns!:

Maybe I can get Madeleine to make some of her black ghoul people or her bloody-eyed Ariel to spice up the scare factor here.