snowed in

After a week of warming and lots of snow melt (we actually got rubber boots out of the closet), winter has returned to Wisconsin. We were literally snowed in for the better part of a long weekend. We did get outside for small bits of time, but the ice, sleet and blowing keep us in most of the weekend. We found plenty to do, like dreaming over the new seeds that came in the mail.

Finishing this simple hat for a friend's new babe. Elsa's head a bit too big, but she was happy to squeeze into it for me (more than once!).

Making a cardboard family with fabric bits for clothes. This simple project was loads of fun for Iris and she is quite good with scissors now and could do most of the project all by herself.



And lastly a real "African finger meal". Iris has been requesting this for weeks. She loves to hear stories from before she was born and Andy sometimes tells stories from his years in the Peace Corps in Lesotho (southern Africa). She is enthralled by the idea that there are people in the world that eat their meals without utensils (maybe we harp on the fork use a bit too much?). So Papa cooked up a lunch from Lesotho which included their staple, papa (just like it looks) a kind of cornmeal polenta, greens, and often they had beans (but we had leftover wild rice - o.k. not so African). We all ate with out hands and dipped our fingers in a little bowl of water in the middle of the table to clean them off. Iris loved it and gobbled up her food (maybe we should do this more often?), Elsa just wasn't sure what all the fuss was about!

Happy Monday.