S'mores in the Snow

It has been a COLD winter here in the Midwest, definitely more cold than I signed up for when I moved here (of course, when I moved here I only planned to stay for 4-6 years, and it's been 13, soooooo.....). With the help of thermal underwear, thick gloves, and hot chocolate, we are trying to not let the negative numbers on the thermometer stop us from getting fresh air and having adventures; the kids still go to their all-day nature class (although they spend a little more time in the yurt than they do in fair weather), we learned how to ski this week, horseback riding lessons went on as usual, and the other night, craving hot dogs and s'mores, we actually had a campfire in the snow:

The s'mores bar worked out only okay in this temperature:

All the ingredients froze while we were eating our hot dogs, and not even the smoking hot, melted marshmallow could warm them up again. So we ate crunchy, frozen strawberries with melted marshmallow, and bit through frozen chocolate into frozen banana, etc.

Will tried to heat up her s'mores ingredients one-by-one:

 When our tummies were nice and comfy, we sat by the fire for a while longer, watching the kids make their own light show with burning sticks:

When it was time to clean up, though, we were stymied for a bit--we usually put out the campfire with the garden hose, but ain't nobody hooking up the hose in this temperature!

And then suddenly we were all, "Ooh! SNOW!!!"

Problem solved! That's definitely one advantage of the winter campfire.

I shared this in the Weekly Kids' Co-op over at Housing a Forest.