Passing the time, maintaining sanity

OMG!  Is winter over yet????

I don't think that we will ever see green grass again!!!  Winter has over stayed its welcome, and from my conversations with friends, family and stranger's, I'm not the only one that is ready to sucker-punch Winter in its FACE!!!

The Russell's are desperately trying to keep our sanity amongst all this white.  Some days are better then others.

Clay celebrated his Birthday March 21.  We kept it a small party of 3.  Clay took William fishing the Sunday before (like father, like son- William loves fishing just doesn't have the endurance yet!)  My husband being the man he is told me his favorite food was Pizza and carrot cake.  So all I really had to do was find Panago's phone number and figure out how to  use my food processor to shred the carrots for the cake.  The cake turned out well, (http://www.kraftcanada.com/en/recipes/all-time-favourite-carrot-cake-85365.aspx)   Ive made this one before and it was awesome.  This time I tried to cut the fat by cutting the oil,  I used 1c of apple sauce and 1/4c of Oil (instead of 1- 1/4c of oil).  Still got tonnes of compliments but I felt it was a little moist, so next time I would just do the apple sauce.

 Hanging out on Dad's "car bed", the "car bed" has actually made it in the house several times since this, and has been the source of several disagreements between us and William.

 "click!"  LOL first time he did this... SO FREAKING FUNNY!

 That's right 25!!! + 3 years old!  The icing didn't turn out well In my opinion,  I haven't done cream cheese icing for a while!  (I made special little cake's with Cool Whip for my Allergy child.)

So as I was saying we are kinda home bound due to the sidewalks being impassible and waist high snow in our back yard.  I cant really take the stroller out, so the sled is getting use.  I can't take William out to the back yard as he will be swallowed by the snow.  We go "swimmin in the water" about once a week , we still take some walks with the sled and Tessa.   But mostly sit inside the house and google warm vacation ideas.

William has been finding "art projects" through out the house... This was my favorite:

 Thank god for google!!! After my initial freak out.  I googled "How to remove Sharpie" and found an idea to use tooth paste!  It needed some elbow grease but it all came off!

With all the "time" I have to dream about warmer weather, I have been planning ideas for my garden.  I'm thinking about container gardening this year.  And really wanted to attempt to grow some tomato plant's from seed. So after talking to my mom and finding out I should have started these things from seed in February, I took a trip to Walmart and picked up an indoor "greenhouse" for me and William to start some Tomatoes and cucumbers. (I'm not too sure about the cucumbers and only got them because they were called "Green Cucumber Dragons" with a dragon on the package and thought William would like the whimsy of it.  I don't think he actually noticed).

 Filling the greenhouse with water to expand the peat pellets!  William called them cookies, and yes, he tried to put them in his mouth.

 Expanding the peat pellets... Or baking the "cookies"

 William decorating the Popsicle stick labels for the greenhouse.

Finished PRODUCT!!!

Lets hope they grow!  It will be interesting to see if my Mother's green thumb has been passed down to me.

It was a great little project for us this morning to help break up the boring-ness!  And although William was more in to trying to eat the peat pellets I think that over the next weeks he will be excited to watch the little plants grow and I'm excited to see the color GREEN AGAIN!

What do you do to help pass the long winter months??