The unexpected Winter Break II and St. Patrick's Day

This week the parents of school children in Albemarle County got to vote on how to work out getting in the required amount of school hours after having 10 days of cancelations from weather. We had the option to increase the time in school each day, attend Saturdays or apply to the state for a waiver to let us out of two of the ten days. The vote was to apply for the state waiver, but I'm pretty sure that will all be good for nothing because at the moment we are in another snow storm with an expected 6-12 inches of snowfall. The cold temps will likely keep us out for another two, maybe three days. Good thing we bought ski passes at Wintergreen this year as we have certainly made the most of them!

We planned a dinner with friends tonight after the violin recital for Jonah and Liam. All native Westerners, they braved the falling snow to get to our house. We enjoyed some great salmon, "Bang-Bang" shrimp made by Caleb and Liam, and warm chocolate chip bars as well as some other yummy sides. It just felt great to share a meal again with friends as we've been on an unintentional hiatus from company for far too long.

In the recital earlier in the day, Jonah played May Song by Suzuki and Liam played Millionaire's Hoedown by H. Clebanoff. Liam's song was very lively and even got a few muted hollers from the crowd. Their teacher is a very tightly wound woman during the recitals (contrary to her more easy going nature in lessons), and Jonah and Gavin and another little girl got an earful from her for shuffling their paper programs, so when a friend of ours gave that little hoot during Liam's performance, I totally expected a reprimand from her at the end of Liam's piece, but she held her tongue. Whew.....

This morning Jonah was thrilled to discover the green toilet water and milk from the tricky Leprechauns! The boys are now into a heavy morning game of Settlers of Catan and I'm pretty sure Jared is going to take on the job of breakfast unless Caleb beats him to it. It's still snowing and we have about 6-8 inches and with a little of that green luck we'll have clear road to ski this afternoon. Our awesome neighbor has already come by to plow our driveway which we did with shovels in the last storm when he was flying (he's a pilot). That was an exhausting experience I hope to not have to repeat this year!