Necessity: Mother of Innovation

When the weather finally begins to warm up in Minnesota, it's a bummer when all it does is rain. The poor little ones are too small to wade through the mud bog we call a yard and I, as their mother, am not brave enough to deal with the horrendous mess of allowing them to have at it in the mud. Granted, it would probably be a fabulous set of pictures for the scrapbook, but the potential mess! I haven't decided it's worth it yet. I digress and am off track... The young ones and weather. So it's finally warm enough to play outside without being bundled up like a stuffed sausage, but the weather has not cooperated for a couple days. It's been raining and icky out. Today I was stir crazy and the children had lots of energy, so we decided to make the best of the situation. What better way to spend a miserably rainy, dreary, damp, cold day in the house than... by building the mother of all forts!


The construction site that E deemed most acceptable for our masterpiece was smack dab in the middle of our small kitchen, which I must agree was a wiser choice than the middle of the even smaller living room. We used all of the kitchen chairs and a bazillion blankets of every size. Hours later the children are still bumbling in and out of the fort on non-stop, worthy missions. Score two points for mother today. Every one's stir crazy energy was channeled into good use.


To cap off a great afternoon, we picked up a $5 pizza at Little Caesar's and had a picnic in the middle of the living room, complete with cucumber slices and strawberries on a blanket while watching a Barney sing-along (a major treat since I have a strict rule about no television during meal / family time.) Indeed these are the important memories we each have an opportunity to create for our children each day.