1. Try not to kill each other.

2. Provide the kids with twelve thousand toy options and watch as they stare blankly at the walls complaining there is nothing to do.

3. Bake cookies. Yell when the flour flies out of the bowl onto the floor. Forgive the kids for their sloppy stirring (and yourself for overreacting) and let them do the jam thumbprints, then yell some more when they drop them jam side down onto the kitchen cushions.

4. Read all of your forwarded, forwarded messages, starting with “Find the man in the coffee beans” and then beat yourself up when your score puts you in the category one lower than “requires brain surgery.”

5. Read other people’s suggestions about what to do on a snow day including serve soup in pretty tea cups and eat snowman shaped grilled cheese sandwiches.

6. Quick trip to your Grandmother’s house for pretty teacups and follow the sanders to a clearance centre for post Christmas cookie cutters.

7. Besmerge those people who actually made the tea soup and I-love-you-more-than-other-parents sandwiches while you clean up the spilled flour and jam from your baking.

8. Look up recipes online and become enraged over the lack of effort people have put into those including black beans.

9. Write a strongly worded letter to the company that neglected to include the anti-tipping device on your stove. Save this letter in a safe place as it is to be sent AFTER they complete the work they are avoiding. A good spot might be next to the platter of non-existent snowman sandwiches.

10. Watch your husband shovel snow from the window trying not to let the steam from your green tea burn your nostril hair rendering the experience unpleasant.

11. Blow-up the 8 foot Toy Story ball that has been staring at you since Christmas. All 56 separate sections require their own insert for the electric pump so choose a spot on the floor that is comfortable–you are going to be there for hours. Watch as your kids laugh, squeal, roll around in the ball, wake the baby from her nap and before returning with the cranky baby, see the deflated, busted ball flopping around your family room.

12. Let your kids find their own fun and when they choose to cut pictures of people out of magazines, tell yourself this is not necessarily how serial killers get their training in ransom note writing.

13. Thirty minutes of mandatory reading for the school read-a-thon. Nothing inspires a child to read more than a forced half hour of snow storm reading. When the four year old shouts, “I read three books, now I get money!” ask her where she will get the money.

14. Try a Skype call with Grandma and Grandpa and choose a time like dinner hour or that fifteen minute window where the baby does nothing but claw at people, scream and make her body collapse into a limpsicle when things aren’t going her way.

15. TV—why didn’t anyone think of this before the snow started?