As the bulk of my regular readers are in the Midwest, I don’t have to expound too much on the gorgeous weather we are enjoying. It feels more like April than February. And although next weekend looks like a return to more seasonable weather, you sure can’t help but think spring is closer than it really is when you can wear shorts and t-shirts in the middle of February.

As I took the girls to school this morning after their three-day weekend, I realized that Presidents’ Day weekend was traditionally when St. P’s had a winter break, usually a five-day weekend. When our new principal came in last year and began revamping the academic calendar, one of his actions was pruning that unnecessarily long break down to just Presidents’ Day. I approved. The kids already get two Mondays off in January, spring break isn’t that far down the road, and getting rid of winter break went a long way toward school dismissing for the summer a full week earlier than it used it.

Still, I have to admit this would have been a good year to have a nice, long break!

The girls still made the most of the gorgeous weekend. With M and C playing volleyball, we put up a net we bought almost seven years ago but never used.[1] Our oddly-shaped yard isn’t super conducive for volleyball, but we still gave them room to work on their serves, which was the biggest goal. Yesterday they both had friends over to play a little. I think C and her buddy got quite a bit of work in, but by the time M’s buddy showed up, a few neighborhood kids had wandered over and they got interested in some game they made up on their own.

We also squeezed in a few walks, a couple trips to the park, and did our best to keep the girls outside for as long as possible. We had the damn windows open most of the time! Despite this relatively mild winter,[2] having lived in Indiana for over 13 years now, I always expect the hammer to drop just when I start to believe the worst of winter might be past. So we’re going to soak up as much of this warmth as we can before it disappears Friday.

  1. We bought it when we hosted my father-in-law’s 70th birthday celebration. We also rented a bug bounce house for the weekend, and that took up all the space in our limited side yard, so the volleyball net stayed in the bag.  ↩
  2. I believe we are over 10” of snow below normal, and over 50” behind where we were in the winter of ’14. And we’ve had a couple cold stretches, but more weeks where it has been warmer than normal.  ↩