I think all weekends should be three day weekends, don’t you?  Really, two days aren’t enough.  By the time you are done finishing up everything from the last week and preparing for the next week, it’s Monday morning already.  That extra day is needed for actual down time or recreation.  Sadly, I think my chances of convincing corporate America at large of the virtues of a three day weekend are pretty slim.  Oh, but I will take them, whenever they come my way, in all of their extended glory.  This time it even got extended a bit further in a way because Steve worked from home today on account of the weather.

So, what’s so great about long weekends??  TIME!  Time to be together.  All of us, some of us, doing something, doing nothing.  This one was extra fabulous because we actually managed to pull off a relatively kid free at home date night, complete with yummy dessert and a movie.  We pulled the futon mattress into the fireplace room (otherwise known as what will be the office, or my studio, if I can only convince people to humor me in referring to it as such, but what currently passes for the least set up room in the house).  There is nothing quite so blissful as quiet time by firelight with the one that you love.  You would think that after nearly 12 years now, I’d be sick of his company, but I’m not a bit.  He just keeps getting better and we keep getting better.  It’s ridiculous really, how giddy he still makes me.

Monday, our bonus day (!), we took the kids ice skating.  It was really Galen’s first time on a real for real rink, not just an uneven puddle in the yard.

I took Baby Roo for a joy ride around our CSA, in a borrowed wagon.

We had a salad that I packed in the car.  I’m somewhat obsessive about salads at this time of year, I just find that I crave them, especially with arugula.  Now that there are winter greens coming in from local farms (thanks to green houses and hoop houses), there is no reason not to go serving huge salads all the time.

We ate on the way to the garden center.  We get the kids little gifts for Valentine’s Day every year and this year we decided to let them each pick out their own little houseplant.  Something to cheer up the house a bit.  Our old house was a notorious killer of house plants.  They couldn’t take the extreme temperature changes and spotty watering.  We lost many of our favorites in the years that we were there and now seemed as good a time as any to replace them.

It was so good to be surrounded by green and growing things!  We came home with primroses all around.  In the future I must remember the importance of having flowers in the house during the winter months.  It makes life seem ever so much more pleasant.  I used to grow paper whites every year (why ever did I stop??) and force forsythia of course because we had such huge clumps of it at our old house.  I think primroses are going to be the new February favorite from here on out.

You know it’s a little thing, but lately I’ve found myself experiencing moments, flashes, of transcendent joy.  I guess that’s not such a little thing after all.  To be perfectly honest, there are moments of sadness too.  I think I kind of had to numb myself to make it through some of the last several months and I’m really glad to be coming out of that space (even when it means coming to terms with certain sorrows as well).  It feels good to realize that my heart is unfurling again, like a butterfly from a cocoon now that the necessity of hibernation is past.  It’s good too, to very clearly know and feel that all I really want or need out of life to be happy is being with these people that I love.  If I just get to do that; to be with them and have them stay healthy and well, I think that I may just be that happiest woman alive.  Really and truly.  Not just because I’ve been so blessed with their presence, but because I am further and profoundly blessed with knowing just how wonderful that truly is.