Rearranging Furniture

Last night a big storm knocked out power to half of our state. School was canceled for today. We all got to stay home. Whatever to do with an unexpected day at home? I considered going back to bed. I decided to do some house cleaning.

My old friends: mop, broom, dust pan, and vacuum.

We've decided to try (again) for a family TV room. I like to move the furniture around.
This is a work in progress because we are going to upgrade to a larger television. This old tv is so tiny that I can hardly see what is happening on the screen. Definitely time for a big flat screen tv, now that the prices are much lower.
This is the first year with our wood burning stove. We turned off the heater and loaded up with wood. The savings is remarkable. But you have to like wood. A lot. Luckily wood is a renewable resource when you have a 19 acre backyard of forrest.
After house cleaning time, I tried to play with the kids. It's not as easy as you might think because they get jealous of each other and fight for practically no reason at all. When they do get along, they get so excited about it that they sometimes fall or do spazzy moves and then begin to cry. They go hot to cold to hot to cold in seconds. It's hard to keep up.
We also made a physical countdown calendar. This chain of loops marks the number of days remaining until our vacation to Disney World. We've been crossing days off a paper calendar but it's very hard for little Julia to understand what that means or how many days remain. This way she can cut off a ring each morning and observe the chain becomes shorter and shorter.
We'll have to keep the chain out of reach because if she had it to herself, she would no doubt rip all the rings off in one day to try and make the trip come sooner.