Pancakes, Anyone?

This morning, I got up bright and early-at least for me(7:30 REAL time) and made my way to the bathroom. I stopped halfway through the living room because-SNOW! Then, of course, I wondered immediately if there was school today. Why, you ask? Because Thursday is now Bible study day. If county school is out-no Bible study. I made my way to the TV and waited through 17 commercials for the news to tell me if there was school. No school. No Bible study.

"I'm going back to bed girls! No Bible study today." They were not happy campers. Then they remembered there was snow.
"Let me sleep 30 more minutes and then I will get up and you can go out and play." So they ate breakfast and played while I tried to snooze more. Wasn't happening. Up too long. There is a window there where I can go back to sleep like awake had never happened. It is about 10 minutes. We were going on like 30-45. Sooo, I got up and savored the snow day and all the things it cancelled. The girls went out to play with our neighbor who was now over to sled. I put in disc 3 of season 4 of Gilmore Girls. Not too much later, the doorbell rang. I am still in my jammies and fully expect it to be our neighbor-even though I thought she was already here. A strange little girl is at my door telling me all the ways I know her and her mom and can she please come over to play. She doesn't look much older than Lilly(turns out she was 9 though)-so I invite her to the backyard where the girls are in full snowball fight mode. Now it is about mid-morning and I have 5 children in my charge and I am trying to decide what I will feed them in about 15 minutes when I must insist they come in, dry their coats and such and warm-up. (And also call new girl's mom to see who she is and let her know daughter is here-she graduated with my husband and knew where we lived through a friend and knew we had girls.) What feeds alot of kids that picky eaters love? Pancakes. So I called them in, put Erika in charge of getting things in the dryer and started mixing batter. Oh my but they were loud and excited and all getting along so well. In no time at all I had enough pancakes for round one and started working on round two. They all ate heartily and then went off to play some more inside. When I had had all the fun I could stand they went outside for sledding part 2. Not even one episode(Gilmore Girls) later, there was another kid thrown into the mix-a neighbor BOY. I had to call off the girls who were not being very nice to him. One girl had to come in for a time-out and another had to apologize. I chatted a little with boy to make sure all was well and then shooed mine+new girl inside. Down to 4 kids. Neighbor girl and neighbor boy went home. It was 12:30 and my nice mom gauge was down to a quarter tank. I established a fun stop time of 1PM when school would start for us and new girl would have to go home.

Whew!! I guess I should have bought those 60 packets of hot chocolate at Sam's. At the time it seemed like way too many. However, having THE hill makes us pretty popular when it snows. Good news, looks like we have a new friend in the neighborhood and we are glad about that-you can never have too many!!

It's been a fun day! School this afternoon and tonight to make up for lost time. I love a good snow day. Supposed to have another one tomorrow-but since they have predicted it-I bet it doesn't happen!!