Frozen Over Winter Break

I can't believe winter break is almost over already! First Aunt Wendy came to visit--Laura cried when she left. An historic house without anything to touch or space to run around isn't kid friendly, but fun to visit every so often. So, the Annual Holiday Program for Families seemed like a great opportunity to see the Phelps Mansion Museum (and I called up the day before the event to make reservations). The kids enjoyed the Steadfast Tin S0ldier puppet show (but Laura was very concerned about why the soldier had only one leg), then they slit the visitors into groups of about 7 people for tours. The tour wasn't very long, and moved fairly quickly, so it didn't exceed the kids' attention span. I think their favorite part was the cookies and punch afterwards.

We also stopped by the Hanukkah House exhibit at Temple Concord since it was nearby. This worthwhile exhibit is a small display in a historic house owned by the temple. It even included a few games that the kids enjoyed playing.

Then, we rushed back to NJ on Tuesday, for Grandma Judy's annual Hanukkah party complete with lots of kids, latkes and presents.

On Wednesday we met Erica and family at the NJ State Museum in Trenton (the kids' friends at school will certainly be jealous of this outing!). Though I went to this museum as a school field trip several of times when I was in elementary school, I don't remember anything particularly exciting about it. The kids would have enjoyed the planetarium, but that was closed. Though this museum has few hands-on activities, the exhibit about global climate change with lots of life-size animal displays and animal tracks on the floor was our favorite. Then we stopped at McDonalds to give the kids a chance to stretch their legs.

By Thursday morning, the ground was covered with enough snow to make an awesome snowball, which we eventually turned into a snowman.


Around dinnertime on Thursday (what an exciting New Years Eve!) we arrived home to a couple of inches of snow (much more than Grandma and Grandpa had). So, we started off 2010 by playing in the snow. Laura took her mommy and baby kitty cat for a ride in the sled, and then Benjamin decided to build a snow cave around them. Unfortunately we forgot to bring the cats inside and the next day the poor kitties were frozen to ground! We managed to extract them from the ice and thaw them, and now, except for a few dirt spots, they are as good as new!

Benjamin discovered that he enjoys doing Laura's hair.