Snow Days and Sinus Infections

This winter has been a strange one, to say the least.  Aaron, content in his new job here in town (rather than across the river), often comes home for lunch, which is always a treat.  But then December and January were unusually icy and we even had snow on the ground for a week.  A whole week!  I think in all, Aaron had 3 snow days called in by his office.  We're so grateful that it's a government job, and that he's salary, so he wasn't risking his life to go to work so he could make hours as he did for 10 years before.  I, on the other hand, have pretty much been sick since October, fighting one cold after another.  All that down time has been hard with school, and now teaching CC on Thursdays, being sick at all is more a nuisance than anything.  It seems that being sick for two weeks brings everything to a screeching halt and then I have to hustle to get caught up, which incidentally runs down my already lame immune system, causing me to get sick again.  So much of this winter, in short, has been spent inside, sick or iced in.  All this time inside is starting to get hard, notwithstanding the ample time together as a family and the fun play in the snow.

The boys.  The snow.  Wow.  I'll never get over it, their red cheeks and running amok, tracking up the snow and throwing snowballs at each other.  It's always a magical thing to behold when it snows, and something comes over all of us, that blanket of white on everything.  Suddenly we're all children in a snowfall.  This year they made the cutest snowman on the picnic table with the first snow, more of a powdering or dusting.

But now that we're in February, and things are slowly teetering towards returning to a semblance of normal once again, spring is around the bend.  This weekend is our family Valentine's Day.  In the past, I've gone over board on making heart shaped calzones, cookies, cupcakes, or heart shaped meat loaf with pink mashed potatoes, and everything from the straws to the red velvet milkshakes and candy dish full of pink and red kisses, or sparkling cider with maraschino cherries...pulled all of the stops, I tell you.  And this year, as I've been sick this week and am just now coming out of it, I'm making a chocolate bundt cake with steeped golden raisins and cranberries, grated ginger, and a decadent chocolate ganache, and perhaps I'll pour some sparkling juice to sip on as well.  We'll see.  But nonetheless, winter is wrapping up, and as always, I look forward to a better one next year.