Make a Snow Fort - Countdown to Christmas - Day 11

Today's activity for the Countdown to Christmas was making a snow fort in the 17 inches of snow that fell from Sunday to Monday. Last year, we didn't get much snow so we couldn't build a fort. The year before that we got enough snow and were able to build a fort with a couple of rooms.

Snow fort in 2010.

Now that the girls are older and can handle shovels better, they created a multi-room fort with hallways.

The girls taking a break from shoveling and creating their snow fort

by sitting in "snow chairs" that they made.

It helped to have a nice base of snow from which to dig the fort.

The snow is about knee-high in this area.

This is Olivia's room in the fort.

They created hallways, bedrooms, a living room, and kitchen so far.

Olivia relaxing in the snow.

The rooms are connected by pathways in the snow.

Sophia's room in the fort.

She is laying down in the snow bed and

Olivia is sitting in the snow chair.

The next step is to collect "snow diamonds" as Olivia calls them and stack them on top of the snow so the fort's walls are even higher. With cold weather, the sides of the fort will stay in place for many months.

Sophia was having a lot of fun playing in the snow.

This will be a winter-long project with the addition of more rooms, walls, "room enhancements," and secret compartments in the rooms.

While the girls were working on their fort, I created more pathways through the backyard to make it easier for the dogs (and us) to get around; and to help us get to the bird feeders.

After doing that, I filled all the feeders so the birds have food in multiple places now. It's nice to see the variety of birds at all the feeders.