Icy Week

This week was little different than most, and I can now say that I have had enough of winter. We had Christmas, and now we had snow, and now that they are both over, I am ready for spring. Unfortunately, we have a while to go yet.

It started snowing on Tuesday, which made the kids at school wacky. The snow got heavier during the day, but it was supposed to turn into freezing rain on Wednesday. If anything, I thought we would get only a delay. Well, the phone rang around 4:30--I had the day off!! I know I'll be paying for it in June, but right now, this was about to be the best Valentine's day ever.

After de-icing the walks and taking some cool pictures...

(click here to see more)

...I spent the rest of the day hanging out with my baby and my Valentine. We didn't go anywhere or do anything productive all day. I did have time to make this e-Valentine, my first creative experience with GIMP. I still have a lot to learn, but so far, I think I actually like it more than my illegal version of Paint Shop Pro.

(click for Valentine's Day Photo Shoot)

I also wrote my letter to Meggie. We decided this year to use our budgeted Valentine's Day gift money to go out to dinner, and to write each other letters as our gifts.

We exchanged letters on Thursday, after we went out to dinner at Cotardo's, this Italian place we love in Blackwood. It was a great end to a long day, evening though we had a delayed opening at school.

Friday was another long day, and then Woo-Hoo, a three-day weekend. We did our weekly shopping Friday night, where we found the Baby Einstein lizard puppet--while Maddie just happened to be wearing the matching outfit.

After a little puppet show, Meggie put Maddie to bed, and we finished packing for our 36 hour trip to Gettysburg. However, for the amount of stuff we had to pack, you would have thought it was a 36 day trip. We had borrowed my parent's van, because the four of us (Meggie, Maddie, Max, and I) were all going to Gettysburg on Saturday morning. This meant packing the dog's crate, all of Max's stuff, the Pack-n-Play, the bouncy seat, the CD player (for white noise), the bouncy seat, clothes for Maddie, food for Maddie, toys for Maddie, and our suitcase.

Saturday morning, I loaded all of this stuff in the van, with barely any room to spare. The trip to G-burg was pretty uneventful. We did have a little adventure on the PA Turnpike. We stopped at the Lawn service plaza to feed Maddie. Maddie now prefers her bottles to be warmed (a new development in the last week), and the car bottle warmer was taking forever to warm up. I ran back into the plaza to heat the bottle with hot water from the bathroom, except that they have those auto sinks that only have warm water. So, I got in line to by some coffee (it was self-serve, so I was just going to fill my cup with hot water), and went to fill up the cup, only to discover that you couldn't get just hot water. So, I filled the cup up half way with coffee, and let the bottle warm in that. Yeah, I'm not looking at winning any 'parent of the year' anytime soon.

The rest of the trip was busy, but it went well. It was pretty much seeing one family, and then the next. Sunday was a little more relaxing. We were originally going to leave earlier, but Saturday was so busy, that we decided to stay and unwind some more. Mom took us out to TGI Fridays for lunch, and then we went shopping for baby clothes in the outlets.

After that, we packed up the whole car again, and drove home, this time without stopping.

We got home, and unpacked everything, and pretty much collapsed in bed. Thank goodness I have off today.

So far today, I have been hanging out with Maddie and Meggie. I did money stuff, and am now blogging (duh!). My project for today will be filing a bunch of papers that have been sitting in the "To-be-filed" bin since before Maddie's birth, and then I am going to re-do the organization system on my desk, since it is not really working right now.

Then tonight, is bells, and then a busy 4-day week, with another yearbook deadline looming, and the NJMEA conference next week.