The doings of a snow day

What does one do on a day snowed in with your kids while still battling a cold (though I fared much better yesterday I might add)? As a stay-at-home-mom (or SAHM as really cool acronym hip bloggers might say), this is a question you often ask yourself at the end of the day. What did I really do today? And is it just me, or do you sometimes feel you want to quantify a few exact things you did when your husband comes home to help validate why you are home? Not because of anything they say, but just because you think that they might be thinking, I wonder what you actually do all day?

So in light of that, here's what I did yesterday:

• made apple cinnamon muffins from scratch, then explained to my boys what "from scratch" means
• made roasted chickpeas for a snack, from the South Beach diet recommendations
• did 5 loads of laundry. Had empty laundry basket for about 4 minutes.
• unloaded, reloaded dishwasher, washed rest of dishes by hand. Had empty sink for 22 minutes. Towel used for dishes then went into laundry basket, thereby giving me only those 4 brief but glorious moments of an empty basket.
• swept kitchen floor, used droppings under bar stools to feed hungry children in third world countries. Not really. But there is always enough there that I probably could.  And WHY did I only sweep the kitchen floor? If I could have just extended that sweeping to all the hard floors I would have Level One'd it yesterday! Dang!
• Forced kids to play outside for an hour before the winds really started to get bad. Let them come back in when the neighbor claimed he couldn't feel his chin anymore. Made a round of hot ciders.
• Made chicken salad sandwiches for 3 boys and a grilled chicken salad for myself.
• Played Uno, Slamwich, and Twister.
• Drove to video store to return movies/games, dropped by grocery for a few items. Teamed up with bagboy to laugh at all the people who stock up for weeks every time we have a snowstorm while secretly wondering if I had enough canned goods. Decided we can clearly survive for 48 hours or so.
• Tasked Jack to vacuuming and folding laundry while I worked on dinner.
• Made spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, chilled cabbage salad (YUM!) for myself.
• Flushed 10 or so boxelder bugs down the toilet (individually) throughout the day. So gross! How are they still alive? Did a few of them stay inside before the cold hit and then lay eggs or something to keep reproducing? And why do they forget they know how to fly as I walk them to the toilet on a piece of paper and then drop them in the toilet? Where are their survival instincts?
• Did "homework". Our school doesn't really 'do' homework so we make up our own, consisting of reading, math and spelling, which we do almost every night.
• Rob put boys to bed while I putzed around picking up some more, checked email and my favorite blogs for the 2nd?3rd?4th? time today, made a grocery list for my dad's visit this weekend and then retired to the most comfortable chair in the house to watch one of my favorite shows, Parenthood.

THE END.