Happy New Year!
The girls were very excited this year that we had a New Years Eve party to go to! Some church friends hosted a kid-friendly gathering with lots of good food, a play room for the kids to hang out in, and an epic game of Trivial Pursuit for the grown ups. We left before midnight, though, and returned home to put on PJs, bake mug cakes, and watch the ball drop. I was impressed that all three girls stayed up til midnight!

Finishing up their first selections for the gallery wall.

School Days
Once January 2nd rolled around, we hit the books again (in our house, full-time schooling doesn't happen during December). All the girls started the new year with a new focus for math: Lion is now a Khan Academy participant! (I deemed her reading skills proficient enough to do it mostly on her own.) She's already blitzed her way through many mastery challenges and in 5 days of lessons has conquered 35% of early math (kindergarten through 2nd grade skills). The big girls have finished memorizing their multiplication tables, so we've allowed them to step back from focusing on math facts and get into doing more concepts work in Khan Academy. They still have to do a math drill each day (rotating through the four functions), but are thrilled to be making faster progress through the 3rd grade concepts.

Other lessons continue as they did before with the addition of several stacks worth of new books to read and an added emphasis on art appreciation. I was given several wall calendars for Christmas, which have now been cut apart and turned into a gallery wall for the music room (with plans to change up the art every few weeks or so). I also now have a desk calendar with a new work of art for each day. The girls now vie for who gets to flip the calendar and reveal each day's new art.

Snow Days!
So...in our current location a mere dusting of snow will typically shut down the town (because the city doesn't have equipment to adequately plow it). This weekend we got at least 6 inches! Combined with 30 mph hour winds we had an actual blizzard on our hands! Of course, not anticipating such weather, our girls no longer own real snow gear.

As a result, Daddy and I recently found ourselves in the unique parenting position of convincing the girls that playing video games for several hours was a great alternative to playing outside. Don't worry! They did get to play in the snow, but only once it got above 20 degrees, and we felt we could reasonably bundle them up for

My snow angels!

play and not have them return frostbitten. In the meantime, the girls did finally enjoy playing on the classic Nintendo that we got for Christmas. Previously, they've watched Daddy play expertly, gotten frustrated with their own brief beginner attempts, and then lost interest. This time I invited them to watch while I played, assuring them it was actually possible to have a great time while doing terribly. Not long after, they were in hysterics as I tried to escape monstery things in Zelda while repeated yelling, "I still can't walk through trees!" Lion helped me play Galaga, and they all had the ego boost of playing backseat drivers for my attempts at a variety of other games until taking over the controller themselves to prove they could do it better than I could (not exactly a high bar).

Other indoor entertainments included watching a handful of movies, reading books while cozied up around the fireplace, playing with Daddy (who was stuck home from work), playing with toys, and eating homemade cinnamon rolls, . . . and banana bread, . . . and pancakes, . . . and hot chocolate (we needed the extra calories to keep warm, right?)

Ice "skating" on the frozen parking lot behind our house. This is what happens when it snows in the South:
It melts just enough to turn into a couple inches of solid ice overnight.