two extra days of Christmas break

The last two days (Mon, Jan 6 and Tues, Jan 7) were supposed to have been the first two days of school starting up after Christmas break.  Because of the extreme cold temperatures hitting -19 and windchills way colder than that, school was called off.  I wasn't mentally prepared for those two days with all the kids alone so cabin fever hit us pretty bad.  Violet and I did manage to accomplish organizing the "crafty" area in the house yesterday - we pulled every coloring book, puzzle buzz magazine, marker, glue stick, pencil, eraser, craft, bead, book, you-name-it, out of the closet, threw away a TON of stuff that was written/scribbled on, and organized the drawers and two shelves.  They look much better and a ton of things that collected in the dining room was cleared off too.  And in the process they found a bunch of "new" things to do. 

Over Christmas break the highlights were

- the cardboard slide
- Calvin's new hotwheels car race track.  He and Violet build cool stuff and they like to hook it up high on a bookshelf to race their cars down.  They named a bunch of their cars and my favorite its a made-up word they called "infloodable blue". 
- T.A.P.E.  They love, love tape.  They "need" tape all the time.  Attaching things to things.  It drives me crazy.  I find tape in all parts of the house where tape shouldn't be.  But they love it and keeps them occupied for a long time.  Violet even wants her own roll for her birthday.
- the 1000 piece candy wrapper puzzle.  I let it sit done for about a week and just put it back in the box today. 
- celebrating Calvin's 6th birthday
- spending New Year's with Shawn and Kim
- seeing my family all together on Christmas day and getting to "play" in the gym