February, part 1: 2/1-2/15

Welcome back to another exciting post!  Well, ok, it's actually kindof boring, but it makes me happy to keep the blog.  So for the 10 of you who read it, thank you!

Anyway, on with the show.

2/1:  Last basketball game

The Small Human absolutely loved the basketball league!  Was he the best player in all the land?  Nope.  Did he have a most excellent time, and improve a lot during the past 8 weeks?  Oh, absolutely!  After the game, the kids had a party, where they all received medals.  The Small Human proudly wore his for the next several days thereafter.

2/3: Making the most out of another snow day

We woke up to this, again:

So we did this:

That would be whole wheat bread, pork roast (I think), and  bean soup.  Take that, winter! And take that, slaving over a hot stove!

2/4:  Beauty

All that snow did a beautiful number on the trees.  I don't normally get religious in here, but seeing the immense beauty of those trees helped reaffirm my belief in God.  Only a master artist such as Him/Her could paint such a stunning picture, in my opinion.

2/5: Ice storm

So we had one day of nice weather, and then it got all nasty again and rained ice.  Yet another snow day for the kids.  The side effect of all that ice is that the trees looked like Lenox crafted them.

2/7: Preparing for Valentine's Day

The Small Human's class had to make mailboxes for Valentine's Day out of tissue boxes.  The Small Human's tissue box looked like a monster to start.  I suggested painting it before we applied all the stickers.  So painting commenced.  Each side of the box got a different color.  We don't do arts and crafts very often, so it was a nice change of pace.

2/8:  The result

This is the result of all that hard work.  Now. my boy abhors pink, so pink heart stickers are kind of a big deal for him.  Fear not.  The back of the box looked like this:

What could possibly say more "Valentine's Day" more than Star Wars stickers?

2/9: Side view

A tissue box plus glitter glue.  I have no other photos for this day, and this one's not very good.  But it's all I have, so here it is.

2/11: Writing letters

The Small Human, hard at work on writing his Valentines.

I know there's been a shit ton of Valentine's stuff in this post, but that's what happened these past 2 weeks.

2/13: Where the snow ends (and begins)

We had yet another snow storm.  This one dumped somewhere between 8-10 inches of snow upon us. On top of what was already there.  So our patio furniture looks like it came from Hoth.  I couldn't tell which was old snow, and which was new.

That night, I made poison soup for dinner.  It's a vegetable beef soup, with ata least 8 different veggies in it, plus short ribs and marrow bones.  The recipe has been handed down from my great grandmother.  Why is it called poison soup?  Because it's the most awful brownish green color, and one of my mom's cousins declared that it looked like poison, so the name stuck.

Initially, the Small Human declared that he would not eat the soup.  I told him he had to try it, at least one spoon full.  Just in case he really did hate it, I made pizza, too.  Well, it turns out that the boy loved the soup and ate an entire bowlful. Plus two slices of pizza, of course.

2/14:  Sledding

V-day was yet another snow day.  So what to do when there's a ton of snow, and a good chance the main roads were clear?  The Small Human and I donned our thermals, snow pants, and boots.  And off to the park we went, sleds in tow!  Getting out of the neighborhood was a bit of a challenge.  We only got stuck once, unlike our poor neighbors that we had to dig out, and then they got stuck again anyway.

So. The park.  Initially, the Small Human was busily throwing tantrums and crying because he kept getting snow on him.  I threatened him with going home if he couldn't get his shit together.  Hubby has a much longer temper than me, and managed to calm the boy down.  One we got the child to wear his hood and his mittens, and once we got him to realize that when he made a path with the sled, it'd probably stay there, he finally began to enjoy himself.  As for me?  I hadn't gone sledding since I was a kid.  I had a blast!  At the bottom of the hill was a nice, big, icy puddle.  When we came close to it, we chose to wipe out rather than sled over its precarious surface.

We were out there for a good hour and a half before the Small Human had enough and wanted to go home.  Weight Watchers took a back seat as we went to McDonald's for lunch.

All in all, a pleasant way to spend a family Valentine's Day.

2/15: Valentine's Day, the grown-up edition

Hubby and I deposited the Small Human with his grandparents, and off we went to Ruth's Chris steakhouse.  Now, I don't know if you've ever been there or not, but it's not an inexpensive place to eat.  Luckily, one of the referral hospitals gave us a $100 gift card to use there.

This photo is completely not flattering for me.  It doesn't help that I'm trying a new hairdo, and failing at it.  Photo credit goes to the waiter who took care of us that night.

Despite my bad hair evening and the unflattering photo, we had a very nice dinner.  It was delightful to have some grown up time, and be able to eat at a restaurant without having to order chicken fingers and french fries, or a cheeseburger.

So there's the first two weeks of February.  Sometime in the beginning of March, I'll post the second half of the month.  Until next time...