Valentine fun, plus photos from way before.

First, goregous girlcousin fun from January. We had lots of good games and smiles and thoughtful conversations and it was *such* a pleasure to meet Elise and to get to see how grown up and beautiful Lindsey is.

Further down, there's a close up of some scones (on a pretty Spode plate, that has some matching smaller plates, which are now (huzzah!) the Valentine's Day China.) The recipe is from Natural Home magazine and was both easy and really good. I might add more cherries, and tarter cherries, the next time I make it, but my scone-savvy children ate these right up and although the dough was a little sticky the finished product was perfectly scone-like.

http://www.naturalhomemagazine.com/Holiday-Ideas/My-Healthy-Valentine-DIY-Project-Recipe.aspx

We had a Big, Bad Storm yesterday - public schools were closed, my school was closed after noon, there was a ton of snow and wind, and so today is calm and peaceful and beautiful. I took Grace snowshoeing (Peter lasted about five minutes) and we went up and down several blocks. She had a good time, I had a good time, and then for no particular reason I ran seven miles in the snow. It turns out that this revealed several things to me: 1. Powder is just awesome to run in. 2. You do lose the trail sometimes, though. 3. Ice cream headache? Happens in non-ice cream situations, where you don't even have the delicious ice cream to make you feel better. 4. Stashing your water on a snow-covered bench in 30 degree weather is a great way to get really, really cold water. 5. Sometimes, your hankie freezes up in your hands, which makes blowing your nose its own little adventure. 6. Fleece running tights are God's gift to Nebraska. 7. Despite what you'd think, your feet don't get all that cold. 8. It's ok to skip the last mile. Finally, 9. The people who do 5K snowshoe races are on to something brilliant. It's now on my list (although it's going to have to be next winter.)

This - is a man with a plan.

For a couple of weeks, Peter has been excited about a plan at his preschool to make cool helmets out of old milk containers. I have to say, I was not prepared for it to turn out quite so... awesome. And fierce. Peter is full of guy noises lately - lots of random pretend gunfire/karate moves/vehicle noises. It's like living with my brother again, which is both heartening (because I like him, and he turned out well!) and amusing, because it seems to be deeply embedded in the Y chromosome. I was still a little nonplussed until I chatted with a buddy of Peter's from school recently, who showed me his Lego ship really proudly, and noted that "this is the place for the pilot. And this is a gun. And this, and this, and this, and this [rotates ship] and this and this and this is a gun. Those are all guns." So it turns out that both the nigh-obsessive interest and the accompanying soundtrack is part of the little guy lingua franca, and as far as I can tell it's part of the adult guy lingua franca as well. I refuse to blog on anybody's bodily noises, but rest assured that Peter is also fluent in that area of communication (both the various acts and the meta-conversation on those acts.) It's all good.