"Tell them my kids will scrub their toilets if we can come over too!"

Have you heard we've been having a bit of winter weather down in Indy? We're talking weather so cold that the polar bears at the zoo had to go inside. It's bursting pipes in schools and houses kind of cold. Come home early from Winter Weekend at Timberwolf kind of crazy. No school for at least four days in a row kind of cold. So what's a girl to do?

I've basically moved into the Dewolf house. I came over Saturday night with freshmen Young Life girls for a post-camp sleepover and then didn't leave. The roads were too bad to drive, I'd be home alone and if you know me at all you'd know there is no food but Diet Coke in my apartment. So I won the snowpocalypse lottery and ended up with Julia and her whole family this week. Jack is in my class when we get back to school, little sister Lucy is in 4th grade and so precious and parents Janelle and Jeff rock.

Most of our waking hours have been spent on couches. The first day watching movies in the sun room. Day two we moved to the big couch. The next day we were at the kitchen counter before going back to the big couch. Today we've all gone back to our assigned seats on the big couch. We also had visits from Sam Huston, Olivia Kegley and the neighbor Livi.

What have we been doing on couches for all of these days? Watching TV, movies and Netflix. Making bracelets on bracelets on bracelets with Julia. She's perfected the earthquake and repeating diamond and you wouldn't even be able to tell our bracelets apart. The girl has got skills.

It was so cold that Manning was freezing her paws when she went outside. We attempted to give her sock booties. She promptly lost her socks in the snow but learned to do her business fast since it was -45 with the windchill. On Monday everyone and their mother and their cousin and mail man was trying the experiment of throwing boiling water into the cold. We decided to mix it up a bit so we put the boiling water in a squirt gun.

Sure enough, Janelle was able to squirt out streams of snow into the yard. Our friend Genna's water/snow video got on the WTHR instagram and then the Sam's video made it on the nightly news. Who knew science was so exciting?

Monday's highlight was side pony braids and Tuesdays excitement came from #tecumsehtuesday memories. Today we finally got brave enough to venture outside into the frozen tundra of 116th and Olio. Sure enough, the roads were still packed with snow and we saw no sign of snow plows or salt trucks. With Jeff driving we made it safely to the movies to watch Saving Mr. Banks. The story of how Mary Poppins became a movie on the big screen was phenomenal. I loved it and now I really want to watch Mary Poppins because I appreciate it so much more.

On the way home we decided to stock up at the grocery store. Marsh was out of canned soup, bread, salad, donuts, bagels and running low on pasta sauce. But Julia found gluten free fruit snacks, I got a new stash of Diet Coke and Janelle got vegetables for the salad she's been craving so all was right in the world again. After dinner tonight Julia and I introduced the family to BIG COOKIE, a Young Life favorite. We made a pan of gluten free and a pan of regular.

We ate it camp style, everyone digging in at once. Livi and Julia were our MVP eaters and Janelle kept saying between bites, "Why are you eating so fast?"

We cleaned those pans and no morsel was left behind. Everyone was beyond stuffed but proud of what we had accomplished.

So now we're back on the couch watching Raising Helen and everyone has a lap top on their lap. Life is good. Manning is asleep beside me and for as much as I dislike animals I'm really warming up to her after five days. We can stay up late again because tomorrow is another snow day... this could be a three week Christmas Break. Not upset about it at all.