The unexpected winter break and Valentine's Day

Two week ago I never would have imagined we;d be out of school again for the biggest storm we've had since 2010.  It dumped 18" of snow.....the kind that makes good snowmen, snowballs, and a great luge track.  So after a 18 day break over Christmas, a 5-day break over MLK, and now another 5-day break over President's Day, that's nearly a month off from school since late December. We will be forced to make up 5 of those days at the end of the school year, but nothing else can be made up at this point. Thank goodness, as I already feel getting out mid-June is painful.

So with the snow we spent a great deal of time watching the Olympics and racing down our own snow covered luge or skiing on some real snow at our local resort. I think Jared has been the most enthusiastic about the Olympics by watching at least a portion of nearly every event and he even gave a High Council talk today tying directly into the Olympic Motto: Citius-Altius-Fotrius: Faster-Higher-Stronger and the Olympic Creed: The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.

One of the upsides of growing up, is that you get to dress yourself!

Because of the snowfall and unexpected ski day that landed on Valentine's Day, we had our traditional candle-light dinner on Sunday. I was feeling crummy with a low grade fever and Caleb was well into his high fever with a wicked sore throat sickness that Gavin had the week before. Sooooo, Jared bought groceries the night before after picking up Liam from his scuba-diving class and pulled together a great pork tenderloin meal for all of us. After we sat up and gave the food rave reviews he admitted that he was a little nervous to be put in charge of  this particular meal because the expectations from previous meals were high. He came through beautifully and wow do I love him for that!

I had put new coupons in their books and left them with a solid chocolate heart on their dinner plate before they came in. They were all excited (except Caleb who was asleep on the couch) and Jonah talked about how he's so happy that he's not a kid when Jared grew up because apparently Valentine's Day was only about lovers......no candle light dinner, no coupon books, or solid chocolate hearts! This boy loves a good celebration, and who can blame him?