Snow Day #2

No school today. A bunch of the neighborhood boys ended up at our house building this awesome snow fort:

My son is the long-haired one standing up front. I made spiced cider first thing this morning, and hot chocolate and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for five at lunch. I also came out to admire it several times, took pictures, and didn't find it necessary to break up any of the snowball or sword fights that took place. I'm a cool mom. Here's the front:

That's James, Colin, AuBrey (as opposed to AuDrey, my daughter,) and Anton and his brother Julien. They had a good time, with a lot more physical activity than would have been included in a regular school day.

Speaking of physical activity, I'm in the process of haggling with the daughter over the worth of her shoveling the driveway "for hours" By my estimation hours is about 75 minutes, or $5 in our current kid/chore pay-scale. Audrey seems to think it was more like three(!?) hours, and hard, physical labor worth far more than that. She also thinks I should PAY her for bringing out her laundry. This is the daughter who has no clothes when it's time to get ready for school, or when I ask those nagging questions like "Do you have any light-colored clothes to put in the load I'm doing." But when she thinks she's getting paid for it she comes out with 7 loads. That's 7 BIG loads--I've got one of those front-loading washers. Hmmm. I've negotiated the laundry down to fifty cents, but she's holding out for $8 on the driveway. We haven't settled yet.