Wintertime....and the livin' is terrible

Well. This polar vortex or whatever it is is killing my spirit.  Every day, I check to see if there is a glimmer of hope on the 10 day forecast for zipcode 18848, and every day, I am greeted with temperatures 30 degrees or less for the next ten days. Oh Texas. I won't say I want to move back, but I sure could use a dose of 70 degree weather.  I miss being able to go outside so much.

Okay. Enough complaining. We had a part 2 of Cherry Berries.  Since I didn't get pictures the first time, here it is:

We went to a train museum in Scranton.  This is just one of the pictures.  The rest my mom put on FB. We are outside at the round house, where they would park all of the trains.

Dottie learned about The French and Indian War recently.  She made a model of the fort Washington set up, called Fort Pitt.  This later became Pittsburgh!

Then, we visited The Ithaca Sciencenter.  As usual at these kinds of places, Ruby went for the water.  Luckily, they drained this thing after a while.

Kids on the dinosaur.

Ruby pretending to be a turtle swimming.

Elliot and the turtle.  The stickers on his face are from a memory test he took from some Cornell students.  He got the stickers as  reward.

Seriously, Elliot could have squatted all day and watched this marble machine.

This was the infrared screen from the Sciencenter.  Notice the dark spots.  They show cold spots.  My nose was cold, so a little black, and Ruby was soaking wet from the water toys.  It kind of looks like she murdered someone or something.

Sorry this one is sideways. If someone went on the other side, your faces were mixed together.

My dad and Ruby making a carbon chain. Ruby just liked the foamy shapes.

Winter day playgroup. We made snowmen rice krispies.

Today, there was a Dr. Seuss event at Ben Franklin. I wish there were more stores like this.  It's like Hobby Lobby, but less busy and huge, and more charming.  Anyway, the kids made Cat in the Hat noses.

My kids always need to smell Yankee candles if they are available.

See the cuteness of this store? Child-sized shopping carts.  You know, so Ruby can make her own purchases.

Because it's Fast Sunday tomorrow, I made a huge meal today.  It took me two hours.  So I have to take a picture when I do hard things, right? Well, you know Ruby and helping. She was "cutting" the ham for the Potato, Ham, and Leek soup.

I'm terrible at taking nice pictures of food.  I remember as we are eating that I should maybe snap a photo.  I was trying to copy a dish my dad and I had at The Moosewood Restaurant in Ithaca last weekend.  It had a quinoa salad, guacamole, and yummy chips.  This was the guacamole. It was really good.  I used a Barefoot Contessa recipe.

Ruby. I had to bribe her with pastries from the Flying Cow to eat her food. I' m an awesome mom.

This is the quinoa salad in this bowl, if you can see it.  It has quinoa, carrots, black beans, green onions, and a yummy lime dressing.

And finally, the Craig bread to go along with the Potato, Ham, and Leek soup. I guess I didn't get a good picture of that.  Well, maybe I'm obsessed with food since I can't go outdoors anymore. Maybe tomorrow will show a glimmer of hope for the 10 day forecast.