Holiday Weekend

I know I'm late in posting about Valentines/President's Day weekend, but better late than never, right?

I've never been into Valentine's Day. When I was single, my girlfriends would have big girl's night out parties. I never got into it. It just has never been a big deal. Even when I was dating someone, it's all seemed kind of contrived and superficial. Not that I'm knocking the holiday. I think it's great that people want to celebrate each other and have a romantic day. Nothing wrong with celebrating love. It's just never been something I subscribed to.

This year we had some fun with it. Playing it up for the kids changes my attitude a bit. Rick and I got up and made a holiday breakfast: pink, heart shaped pancakes (I don't really like pancakes, but Rick's are delicious), pink whipped cream and strawberries all topped with raspberry syrup. It was divine.



Later, Rick and the boys gave me a box of chocolates- and by chocolates I mean a heart shaped box of Ferrero Rocher. Perfect.

After church, my parents had a family party. We had a delicious dinner. Mom planned some Valentine's activities, like, everyone had to pick someone else's name out of a bowl and anonymously write something you like about them- very creative answers when little kiddies are involved. Then later we read them aloud.

I was in charge of a game. The kids love the adverb game and it requires no preparation- how can you lose there. It really can be quite funny. This clip isn't very clear. I think Darren and Jairon are acting out bow hunting "delicately" or something like that.


It was a fun holiday.


We continued the holiday weekend, by teaching the boys how to cross-country ski on President's Day. They did extremely well. It turned out to be a bit more of an adventure than we'd planned. Rick and I read on the map that there was a beginner's loop if we started a few miles up the road from our regular route. We found it just fine. The problem was that with the fresh snow, we missed where the loop looped. After an hour or so we realized we should have been back at the beginning and turned around. Our short, beginners trip turned out to be almost three hours. The kids were troopers. No complaining, just sucked it up. Isaac did have to rest a couple of times and mentioned that he wished he could just teleport back to the car. I think we all did.

It was a beautiful day though. Light snow falling and about 34 degrees. We only saw a couple of people in the parking lot, then had the trail to ourselves. A grand day for sure.