Riley and Avery

So it was in the 50s yesterday, total Springs jacket weather, and then this morning, well...I wake up and try to turn on the news to see how to dress Riley today for school and it said that there was no satellite signal. I'm baffled as to why there wouldn't be a signal and then I look out the window and it's a blizzard outside! What!? I had to get the broom and bang the snow of the satellite dish. There is about four or five inches on the ground right now. Since it was warm outside yesterday, the roads were slushy, but not too bad. School was still scheduled. However, if we were going to a neighborhood school I would have taken Riley in, but with a 20+ minute 12 mile commute one-way to her school, there is no way we could make it. I'm glad I didn't take her in now, since the snow is now sticking to the roads a lot and picking her up would have been horrible. And it's still snowing. One the news, they are baffled as to why school wasn't delayed or canceled. I guess no one was really prepared for this snow, including the school-closing people.

I have been busy making some Montessori activities for Riley. Mostly because I'm a total nerd. For this one she matches pictures with the beginning sounds a/b/c/m/s/t. She's got this one pretty much down, but I haven't finished the next set yet, r/n/h/i/f.

For this one I printed out pictures of the sun and eight planets (poor Pluto, no longer a planet). She had to order them up using the number in the upper left. Then she looks at the bottom to figure out how many moons each planet has and puts the correct number of pennies under the planet (well, some planets have like 64 moons, so I just went by how many large/named moons the planet has). Basically, just an exercise in number-recognition. It's quite a bit too easy for her, but she likes looking at the pictures of the planets:

Oh, and apparently a neighbor called the cops on Rudi one day while I was at school. Let me start from the beginning...A neighbor who lives further down our building has two dogs (not that they're allowed to have two dogs, but whatever) and she walks these dogs past our house and through our yard several times a day. This woman moved in last summer and as they were moving in we were always outside riding bikes and I always tried to make eye-contact with them so I could say hello, but they avoided eye-contact. So they're those kind of people...but I digress. So one day we find a pile of turds in our yard and are none too pleased. So, I was at school one day and Rudi looked out the kitchen window and sees the woman standing there letting the dogs pee in our yard. So, being uniquely Rudi, he runs out, sans shirt, and yells at the woman to not let her dog go in our yard because our kids play out there. She says a few things back and goes back to her house and then comes back to our yard with her dog no more than two feet from our kitchen window. So, being uniquely Rudi, Rudi runs out again. The woman goes home and apparently calls the police. The police apparently think it's a joke and Rudi laughs with them over it, everyone knowing that the complaint was unfounded. So when I get home, Riley runs up all excited "Me and Avery saw the police up close today while you were at school and you missed it all!"

Later, the other neighbor-lady across from us comes over to give Rudi kudos for standing up to that woman and says that she saw the whole exchange between them (but hadn't realized that the police had been called) and she'd say so if the leasing office got a complaint or whatnot. Heck, this is Colorado, home of the "make my day" law. After the first warning, Rudi could have gone out there and shot her dead and it would be legal. Not that we own a gun (oops, I mean, a "weapon")...

Alright, I'm going now...