Snow in the kitchen

A good chunk of our day revolved around snow. Either outside playing in it or inside crafting recipes with it in our kitchen. We were so very glad for the distraction it provided for us. K seemed to have woken up on the wrong side of the bed but then after a hard couple of hours into our day she just started sobbing uncontrollably saying she really missed her friends back home (and especially her "D friends".) Such heartache is enough to make anyone have a rough day! We talked about it quite a bit and then we looked at pictures of our dear friends, talked about when we would see them again and then switched gears to snow.

The girls had been asking to make snow ice cream since we moved here and today seemed like the perfect occasion to do it. The ingredients are simple enough (we based ours off this recipe):
-16 cups of clean, freshly fallen snow
-1 tablespoon vanilla
-vanilla almond drink

K mixed the vanilla into the snow and then we added some vanilla almond drink into the mixture just a little at a time, until it was a nice ice cream consistency. We chose to omit the sugar called for in the original recipe since the almond drink was already sweetened. The children devoured it. I had a couple of spoonfuls and I have to say it tasted like a vanilla milk shake!

Later on in the day, just before dinnertime, we decided to make some sugar snow maple candy. We followed this recipe but I admit I was a bit stingy and we only used one cup of maple syrup (it's expensive!) It was a slightly messy project (due to this Mama using too small of a pot and the syrup boiling over), but lots of fun. C kept exclaiming, "I really feel like we are Laura and Mary Ingalls right now!" She quickly got out her potholder loom and got to work on it telling me it was just like the winter sewing that the Ingalls girls did in the Little House in the Big Woods. I adore her enthusiasm. 

Our candy cooked a bit too long so it ended up being more like maple syrup hard candy but that  didn't stop us from eating many servings of it! We just had to brush our teeth extra good before bed. It was really more about the process than the end result anyway. But I have a feeling that we'll be trying this recipe again with our next snow fall.

Even with all of the day's fun, K was heartbroken again by bedtime. But the comfort C gave her seemed to help immensely. I will be saying an extra prayer for her tonight to help her heart heal and I have hope that her siblings have already done the same.

Snow in the kitchen