It has been a *little* snowy lately

Last Friday, after a harrowing and terrifying drive in a snowstorm that began abruptly with an unrelenting ferocity that this northern girl has never before seen, we arrived at my parents' farm for a long weekend.  (Little did we know, we could have stayed at least 3 more days, as the snow has arrived in northern Virginia and we have not had school all week!) 

Although the temps were in the low teens with wind chills even lower, we had several 30-60 minute sled riding sessions on The Hill at the farm.  The Hill was fast, like skeleton-sled fast, with the added fun of frozen horse droppings that we would hit and make us fly off of our sled, into the air.  It was like hitting rocks. Larry broke a sled.  We all have bruises.  But it was fun.  

We have allowed Abigail to retain her only two vices from babyhood.  One is Blankie.  Sometimes, when stressed or tired, she just says "I need to sniff my Blankie" and within a few minutes, Happy Child returns.  Besides, 4 is not too old to have a Blankie.  But the other vice is her sippy cup.  Sure, she drinks water and juice and lemonade out of regular cups and glasses.  But when waking up, going to bed, or decompressing, she relies on hot milk in a sippy cup. Abigail loves hot milk, but she REFUSES to drink it out of anything except a sippy cup.  When presented with the choices (A) hot milk in another type of cup and (B) no milk at all, she always picks (B).  Since we forgot her sippy cup on this trip, Abigail didn't have any hot milk, but she did try something new:  hot chocolate (made from milk) in a mug!!  This is a HUGE step for her and a treat that she loved after sledding.  

My parents also took her to see Frozen for the second time.  She is OBSESSED with the movie, in a good way I guess, not in a Disney-princess way. She is singing (even more than usual), talking about eternal concepts like family, love, protecting people from getting hurt and friendship.  She is picking up and using new vocabulary, such as "isolation" and "sophisticated."  Abigail made my mother role play Elsa and Anna for hours.  During one break for dinner, my mom was relaxing with adults for a few minutes when Abigail (ready to return to playing) said "Grandma, you be Abigail and I'll be Grandma."  My mom said okay and said some vague thing.  Abigail corrected her, "No, you say 'Let's go play' and then I'll say 'yes' and we'll go do that right now!!"  We got a real kick out of how Abigail tricked my mom into playing more.