Art and Snow Caves

Homeschool is moving right along. The big kids continue to provide lots of help with Marie. They almost trip over themselves trying to be the one to get to hold her. That is certainly helpful when Senia has to manage school work with others, not to mention cooking and otherwise caring for the baby.

Elena and Silouan have been doing more drawing and painting recently. Senia had the idea of looking up painting how-to videos online. Elena followed along with the steps to paint the painting below. She has painted three or four different flowers in the past couple weeks. We are happy to see the kids' continued practice using the brush and the pencil. 

And now, for the snow update. The daytime temperature rose above freezing for several days in a row, threatening the structural integrity of our snow cave in the front yard and requiring constant maintenance on the sled track down the side yard. We are pleased to announce that, though the snow cave is more compacted from the thaws, and though the cave is significantly shorter on the inside, it still stands. It is a month old today! And we discovered that the thawed and refrozen ice means that we can sled down the entire football-field-sized, snow-blanketed field beside our house. So, all is well in Pennsylvania.

Silouan in the snow cave