Little House in the Big Woods

   NO, this is not actually our house, for those of you wondering; however, during the winter months, I refer to myself as Laura Ingalls Wilder. Why? Because we live in the country and use a wood burning stove as our source of heat. We have a wood pile out back, its filled each year and we haul wood during the winter months to heat the house. So my job most days, is to keep the fire burning. Now, as a city girl born and raised in a home where you flipped the switch and your gas log fireplace comes on, this was a change. I always thought that fireplaces were more for ambiance and not actual function, so I digress.

The most important things we have learned about wood burning stoves are:  having your house at a certain humidity level keeps the heat in (thus meaning we boil a pot of water on the stove 24/7, and there are humidifiers in every bedroom), flipping a switch on your ceiling fan to make the blades rotate the opposite way sends warm air DOWN, and having a skill to build a fire that lasts for 9 hours is priceless (or very valuable, if I was a contestant on SURVIVOR).

This is Pole #15, the view from our front window; seasons come and go by pole 15, but this is one of my favorite!

After getting about 6+ inches of snow (which is a LOT here in the south), we spent most of the day cooped up inside due to the cold temps (15-20degrees), but did try to venture out... or should I say, Peanut made it out for about 10 minutes.

We made Chocolate Chip Pancakes, a must on a snow day!

Big Guy enjoyed his favorite DVD

Puzzles, puzzles, and more puzzles

Peanut outside!

And then last but not least, it is important at the end of a snow day to make some sort of snow concoction. Snow candy, snow food, snow slushes, so since we couldn't go to SONIC, we made slushies! Apple juice to be exact.

COLD and yummy!

This is what a non-napping 3-year-old looks
like at the end of a long cold day!

And if you've made it this far, and really want a good picture that captures the vast wide open space where we live, enjoy the pics below!

Beans, Penguins and Snowflakes

This month I thought we'd take some time and learn about the letters P and S. Seeing that its cold outside, the snow has fallen, it is only appropriate that we highlight and talk about whats happening outside our windows! So we started off the month talking about Penguins; where they live, what they look like, we checked out some books from the library, and even a DVD (which was a huge highlight) for Peanut. We typically do any sort of learning time when the Big Guy is down for nap time (he is more destructive these days). We talked about snow, snowflakes, and the importance of only eating WHITE snow, not yellow, brown, or any other color!

Peanut came up with the following
P words: Penguin, Purple and Peck (the last, I was a little surprised by!)

S words: Snow, Snowflake, and Stop (which had nothing to do with our project, but rather reflects her backseat driver ability, when she points out every red traffic sign saying, "theres a red octagon stop sign, are you going to stop mom." And for those of you wondering, YES I always stop for the stop-signs. I must confess it may not always be a complete stop.

To help and highlight what we've been learning, we've been reading some of the following books.... One of my favorites, Bear Snores On, so cute, captivating, and funny! And some of our others include, Fancy Nancy, Diary of a Fly, Click, Clack, Moo, and the all time favorite Tickle Monster. Which is best read by the J-man, so Peanut tells me.

Beans.... yes, this is the month where I find beans in the toys, beans on the floor, beans in pockets and it all goes on and on... but I just deal with the hassle of it all, for the sake of playing with new textures, filling and dumping, measuring and building, and sometimes, crunchy things in the mouth!

I got what is actually a an outdoor sand-table last year and instead of sitting it outside, we use it inside during the winter months. It is filled with beans i got for $10 from wally-world, yes, they have lasted two years now... the nasty ones we have dumped, but for the most part, they are as good as new. This provides endless hours of entertainment, and takes about 15minutes to clean up every day.