Not a Long Weekend...

We had two weekend in a row that were long due to a combination of snow days and a holiday- at least Alyssa and I did. Donnie doesn’t get “snow days” or President’s Day off or teachers’ vaccine day off so he had regular work days and weekends. Same with Abby- since she does high school/ college classes online and works at Donnie’s office, she doesn’t get break days. But Alyssa and I are both directly affected by district wide snow days, federal holidays and teacher vaccine days. We had long weekends two weekends in a row. Last school week was tough- FIVE whole days of in person school and then a piddly two day weekend.  Sigh. (I subbed all five days last week but two of the days were half days so my week was easier than some weeks).

We enjoyed the weekend, shortened more than recent ones had been, notwithstanding. Abby had a three hour dance practice on Saturday which was a make up class for a canceled classes earlier this month. The practice was preceded by a meeting with Abby’s dance teacher and dance moms. The dance teacher is new to the studio this year and has ruffled a few feathers. He calls a spade a spade and has inadvertently hurt some of the girls’ feelings with his forthrightness.  However, he loves Abby and has been very complimentary of her work ethic and performance from the day that he first saw her (he has seen her over the years as he’s been a guest teacher in years’ past though this is the first year that he’s been a regular teacher at the studio). I had the opportunity to talk to him after the meeting and class and enjoyed chatting with him and hearing good things about Abby (this is Abby’s last year in competition dance so it’s my last year to brag talk about her dance 😆).

Meanwhile, Donnie had gone into work. His firm is leasing less space in the building that they’re in than they have in the past so Donnie went into work on Saturday, along with a few of the other attorneys, to get items out of the space that they will no longer be leasing. 

In the afternoon, the sun came out and the temperature was in the mid to high fifties (it had rained during my early morning run). My car was filthy from the salted roads so I decided to wash my car. Donnie normally does this (or takes it through a car wash) but since he was gone, the sun was out, it wasn’t freezing, and my car looked like it hadn’t been washed in years, I did it myself. Alyssa came out to help me and we did a fine, if not stellar job. I noticed some leaves on the ground in the front yard that hadn’t been bagged or composted so I decided to rake them and place them in the compost bin. On the way to the bin, I noticed some carrots tops in the garden. For some reason, I didn’t pull all of the carrots out of the garden last year. I wondered if the carrots would be salvageable. I started digging them out- the rain had loosened the soil quite a bit but the carrots had apparently grown quite accustomed to their life underground and did not come out easily. I spent a lot of time getting them out of the ground and then I washed them in the driveway with the garden hose because they were caked in mud. I was super pleased to see that, though some looked a little worse for the wear, I could tell they were edible.

After dinner, we went on a family trip to Target. The girls wanted to check out their bathing suits and summer clothes.

Sunday was running early in the rain for me (it was funny that last weekend when running I was dodging ice patches in the sidewalk and on Sunday I was dodging the worms that dotted the sidewalk), church watching and then Abby had dance practice. Jacob texted me and asked if we could meet half way between our house and his place so I could bring some packages for him that were delivered to our house. Donnie already had plans to go to a music store and the girls had homework to do so just I went to meet Jacob for an early dinner in West Chester (West Chester/ Mason is the half way mark between us and the two towns have every kind of dining option we could hope for so it works out to meet and eat). Jacob brought his girlfriend, too, so I got to see both of them. Had a nice visit and ate some good food (gourmet it is not but TGIF tastes good). 

That was our short, er, regular, two day weekend 😆

Carrots and mud- these were the carrots I pulled out of the ground. Appetizing, huh? I know it’s gross to have them on the driveway but they were going to get washed many times both outside and then inside and they would be peeled before eaten so I set aside the grossness of placing any food that I later planned to consume on the dirty driveway. 

Looking a little better...

I peeled and cut the carrots so we could snack on them.  Abby had just been lamenting that she’d hoped we’d bought enough carrots at the grocery store.  She and Alyssa love them and eat them like crazy.  Our little crop o’ carrots helped to ensure that we wouldn’t run out of carrots this week.  Now if I could only pull carrots out of the garden every week...

My favorite college students (even though one could only manage a grimace for the picture...)

Proud of my choice of a salad instead of the many tempting fried entrees from the menu :)