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Our Week: Snowtober

A tree blocking our path after Snowtober

Our week started off with several resounding CRACKs, as tree limbs fell during New England’s big October storm. We lost power shortly after 11:30 Saturday night, and didn’t get it back until Thursday evening. This is what our street looked like the next morning. We were just happy to find a way out – some friends were trapped!

Getting ready to go trick or treating

We escaped to my sister E’s apartment, where the kids enjoyed trick or treating. Emma dressed as Cinderella, Johnny as a mask-less Spiderman (hand-me-down from Mike’s cousins), and Lily was “Lily”. She surprised me by having absolutely zero interest in dressing up. When people asked, she told them she was “warm”. Incidentally, this is the first time I’ve gotten her to keep her coat on all fall – and so far the last. She refuses to trade her crocs for boots, too. I got her to wear boots into a store once, and halfway through she took them off. And wouldn’t keep them on after that.

Johnny and Lily sort through their trick or treating loot

My sister lives closer to Boston than we do, and the houses are much closer together. The kids were amazed at all the candy they got. Usually they only visit four or five houses!

Lily admires her trick or treating candy

They were so in awe, that they spent the entire evening arranging and rearranging their candy, especially Lily. None of them even thought to eat any of it! They’ve made up for that since. =)

wet felting wool

While at my sister’s we visited The Island Yarn Company’s tiny (but very well-stocked) yarn store. I wanted to look at all the different kinds of yarn, but Johnny had a hard time resisting the urge to run around and around the central aisle of the store. So we picked up some wool to try out wet felting and left. All three kids enjoyed playing with the wool roving in warm soapy water.

Playing with wet felted wool

I had hoped to make little felted balls, but we must have done something wrong because I couldn’t get the fibers to felt together enough. So we made some “snakes”, as the kids dubbed them. They thought they were cool. I think I need to learn more about wet felting before we give it another try!

Tree branches in our yard after Snowtober

We got our power back on Thursday, but there’s still plenty of clean-up to do, especially with our willow tree (see above). I just hope it manages to stay alive! I love that tree, and the storm left it pretty beat up.

I’m linking this up to the Afterschool Blog Hop, hosted by Julie at Just Playin’ Around this week. We mostly had an unschooled week (school was cancelled every day except Friday), but I think the kids learned a lot about storms and emergency preparedness (we need a generator). And we got to spend some great time with my sister!

MaryAnne is a craft loving educator, musician, photographer, and writer who lives in Silicon Valley with her husband Mike and their four children.

15 thoughts on “Our Week: Snowtober”

  1. I’m glad you weren’t trapped! And I’m glad you got to go to an awesome yarn store. Oh how I wish I could go to a store devoted to such things. I’ve always been interested in felting, but I have no idea what to do. I’m still not awesome at crocheting. I’ve made a few hats, but I tried to make R a new one, and so far I’ve done two that I didn’t like and had to start over. Although, my stitches and rounds were better than they had been, I still made some silly mistakes. So frustrating.

    I love your daughter’s “warm” costume! They all looked great :)

  2. I can’t believe the snow! I’m glad a bad situation ended up being a silver lining for you. We’ve tried wool felting before too and never had too much luck with making anything. I remember reading a good tutorial on The Magic Onions’ blog.

  3. Grumpy Grateful Mom

    Glad you got your power back, though that’s a huge tree to move! And I love the candy lineup–so cute! Cute snakes too. :)

  4. I’ve been laying low on the blog-front this weekend, because other than the snow, we’ve been having lovely fall weather! It looks like you all were having a lot of fun, too.

  5. So crazy to see the fall colours and that huge tree down!! I do hope the willow survives. How great to have a sister able to take you all in when you needed it! All your kids are cute in their costumes, and how precious that Lily was ‘warm.’

  6. It’s great that you had a place to go to. Lily is so funny with her clothes preferences – she must have inherited them from Emma. It looks like you had a great Halloween.

  7. So crazy that the storm did so much damage! Glad you all are ok and got to spend some time with your sister. I love how Lily is arranging all of her candy!

  8. I love Lily’s “costume”!!!!!! So cute. Glad you got power back; we didn’t lose ours this time. We are not very prepared for emergencies – MUST work on that!!!!!!!!!

  9. That was quite a storm! I’m glad your power is back on. LOL about the wet felting snakes, at least the kids still had fun with it.

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