Snow Day at The Little Red House Under the Tall, Tall Pines

My kids have had 2 snow days off school in the last 2 weeks. Today is one of them. It has been for the sleet and ice as much as the snow itself. N. has been loving playing with his big sisters; building igloos and other snow forts.

Once a few years ago during an ice and snow storm we lost almost a whole side of one of our tall, tall pines. The cracking sound of the breaking branches was so loud!! I will never forget that sound. Many kinds of pines will grow new branches. Our White Pines are not that variety. They are gone forever once they break off. Now, when the other surrounding trees are free of leaves the scars of the missing pine branches are a reminder of that bad storm. Luckily we didn't lose any branches this time.

Age Appropriate

[image borrowed from HERE]

N. received a game for his birthday that involves cracking a code and determining a secret number on a safe dial in order to open the box!! Mind you, his birthday was in August and the dial had not been cracked...not until a few nights ago.

We have been trying, and trying to figure it out. I suggested a stethoscope or some other trick like you see in the old movies.

Then it occurred to me that maybe the age of the game was too hard for N. and the games awaiting inside the elusive locked box would be just more frustration for a seven year old- instead of hours of independent fun.

We looked at the age posting on the front of the box.

"ages 8-12"

I said,

"Well there's the problem. Neither of us is 8-12!"

After that revelation, we promptly gave up and broke into the gosh darn box.

It seems the dial had a defect in the mechanism, as could be seen from the inside of the box. There are many games inside the box and they are all good for even a 7 year old.
The 44 year old, I'm not so sure!!!!