Twenty-fourth weekend

We woke up Saturday morning to about 4 more inches of snow. It was so beautiful! The temperature was quite a bit warmer, too, so it wasn't too difficult to convince the boys to go outside to play in it. By the afternoon, it was almost 40 degrees, and so by Sunday most of the snow was gone again. There were no discussions about bringing sleds to school today! Everything is wet mud now. But it's so much warmer. It was so cold last week, that a few times I even got Svea to wear a hat, coat, and mittens at the same time!

 I also spent some time over the weekend making a hat for her. I was following a pattern for a hat with pigtails and bangs, but somehow made a mistake around row 6, so it wasn't going to work out. So I adapted it and made this one instead. I think it's pretty cute. She likes it, but also doesn't like to wear it.

 She is turning into our little fashionista! She picked out her own clothes, the long-underwear shirt with flowers, hearts, and owls, together with the blue skirt with pink polka dots. She also had leggings on, but while she was running around, they got cuffed up around her knees. She loves pictures, and will stand still -albeit briefly- to get a picture taken. You have to be fast, though, because she wants to see the picture immediately and will start walking toward the camera as soon as she thinks you've taken it.

 While the boys were getting ready for school this morning, she thought she should too. So she got her shoes on, and found her backpack and was all ready for more pictures. I can't believe how big she's getting! She has started screaming a lot when she doesn't get her way, so we're hoping that phase doesn't last very long. It's pretty hard on the ears. High-pitched, shrill, just does it to be annoying.

Jeff was the on-duty teacher this weekend, so we had to stick around in case any issues arose, and also had to be at all the meals. It was a "blue" weekend, so the students could go home if they wanted to, or they could stay here. About 1/3 left, so there were still lots of people. We didn't know that this semester, when there are this many students, there is a full time kitchen staff on weekends as well! Last fall, on the weekends Jeff was on duty, he had to go make sure all the food got made as well. This time, he just had to make sure the students who were supposed to help in the kitchen showed up. The weekend planning committee had decided this weekend would be their "gender bender" theme... It was interesting trying to explain that to our kids. Saturday night, dinner was a bit late, and when we got there the boys said "it's a fancy dinner!" Since we don't usually go to fancy dinners, they were slightly concerned. I told them it wasn't, and they said "but everyone is dressed up!" and indeed they were...all the girls were wearing clothes to look like "men" and the boys were wearing clothes to look like "women" -and I use both of those terms in quotes because their ideas were somewhat interesting. We were discussing with a couple of other teachers during dinner that it's interesting to see how the concept of gender plays out. There weren't any "classy" people, either male or female. We decided that it must be that if they dressed classy, they'd have to act classy too, and that wasn't what they were particularly interested in this weekend. Svea thought it was fun because there was music and people were being silly and loud. The boys were a bit confused, and did quite a bit of laughing. The dinner itself was amazing. We had baked chicken with something like cayenne on it -though not quite as spicy-; tomato, feta, and red onion salad; roasted potatoes; green salad. All delicious. Then they had a catwalk for the best costumes. The kids thought it was too loud in there, so we went home shortly after that.

Friday afternoon, Jeff picked the boys up from school and they went sledding for a bit at the hill across the street. I didn't get any pictures of them this time, though! They haven't wanted to be quite so photogenic this week, I guess.

Tomorrow Anders and Torben will be 6! Time goes by so fast! They are so excited for their birthday party, and spent the whole weekend trying to convince us that when it's your birthday, you get to stay at home until your friends come over from the preschool. Turns out that that is quite common...and whether they go back after the party is up to them. We'll see what they want to do. There will be 20 people coming for lunch tomorrow!