Remembering St. Valentine

When a holiday falls on a school day, I like to change things up a bit.  Not every holiday is for taking a day off, but every holiday has it's own hallmark.  For Valentine's Day, we started the day off with a special heart shaped pancake breakfast

and then dove into the history of St. Valentine, why we celebrate Valentine's Day, and the history of the symbols of the holiday.  John took a half day and we went to tour the garden.  The day was bright and a bit crisp, but we wanted to see the first show of daffodils.  We discovered a section of the garden that we had previously overlooked--the mountain overlook--which was quite nice,

and we enjoyed a quiet stroll while appreciating the winter blooms. 
 

This iron works rose was too fabulous not to appreciate

More daffodils will push up as spring gets closer and we look forward to viewing them.  They are quite the stunners! 

Jozsef worked all day showing the community some love with heart shaped biscuits at Chick Fil A,

but dinner was a family affair.  The day was quite enjoyable and a wonderful weekend kick off. 

John and the kids made chocolate dipped strawberries for dessert

Snow Day!

Every year the kids look forward to snow--even though we don't always have it  This year they got giddy at the mention of flurries in the forecast.  And flurries we got--plus some. 

The weather that week was somewhat wild.  In a matter of 48 hours, we went from 60 something degrees with rain to a severe thunderstorm warning, to flash flood warnings, to tornado warnings, to snow flurries in the forecast, to ice warnings, to snow, to ice warnings, and back to flash flood warnings!  Whew!  We could barely keep up!

 But as always, snow brings a special kind of peace, stillness, beauty, and fun.  The kids bolted out of the house just as soon as they saw the first flakes stick.  They built snow balls, snow men, they had snowball fights, they went sledding--they overall just had fun!

Snow falling in our backyard

View from our front porch

Nikolas was home sick and Connor was keeping him company managing his own cough, while Jozsef was out running expo at Chick Fil A until the snow forced them to shut the store down.  We watched cars struggle to get up the incline that our house rests on--a few of them did not make it--and we prayed for Jozsef's safe return.  Thankfully, the snow had turned to slush by the time he needed to drive across town. 

Four inches was just enough snow to have some fun with

All day we enjoyed every flake we could and relished the warmth and crackle of our fireplace.  It may be the only snow day we get this year, but that's ok because it was much appreciated and enjoyed.  :-)

Connor's contribution to the fun was a mini snowman :-)