What an awesome weekend with some very cool people. And I made it home, which was my concern in going--that I was going to be detained out of town longer than expected and that maybe I wouldn't connect with anyone and I'd run out of gluten-free food. None of that happened. We made it home in record time, despite some less-than-clear roads. And I was so lucky to be with a great group of women and to have the intensity of not being able to distract ourselves with outlet shopping and my other plans that had to fly out the window with the weather. Plus we got beautiful snow on top of it all. Isn't life great?!

I roomed with two other women from my Community Group. It's kind of interesting, since I am not a member of this church, but I still feel very close to many people there, and I run into them often when I'm out and about. I love these relaxing weekends where there's nowhere to go, very little structure, and someone else is doing the laundry and the cooking. There was also a perpetual snack buffet in our main meeting room, so at any hour, day or night, I could get chocolate, cookies, cake, chips, and all manner of sugary drinks. I could get used to that!

In addition to listening to a really wonderful, talented speaker, I spent the weekend doing some of my favorite things with people who share my passions. I played what probably amounted to several hours of Yahtzee with some other dice aficionados (I was singing the praises of online solo play if they couldn't get enough with people in real life!), and I played Settlers of Catan, which is my current second favorite game, with two very cool sisters and their mother. I cannot say how excited I was to find other people who enjoy this kind of strategy game. I also finished a hat that I was knitting and started a new one...and started it again...and started it again...and ripped it out yet again. We also always play a very fun group game that is a variation of musical chairs: one person stands in the middle, and everyone else sits in chairs arranged in a circle around that person. Then that person makes a true statement ("I have more than two piercings in my ears."), and everyone for whom that is also true gets up and has to change seats, and whoever is left without a seat has to make the next statement. It's a total blast, and though it typically starts off pretty benign (what color we're wearing, where we went to school, how many places we've lived, who has more than one sister, etc.), it quickly gets much more personal ("I have peed in the shower," "I sleep naked when I'm not at places like this," and much juicier confessions). This can go on late into the night. I stayed in and played Yahtzee instead of going out to dinner on the semi-plowed roads while snow was still falling, so it was just an all-around very cool weekend.

And now the weekend continues with a snow day tomorrow. I needed that. I need some time to regroup after a hard week and to get a temporary reprieve from my usual hectic schedule. My kids need more time to do their homework. What we don't really need is an entire playday that will get us behind on the work we need to get done, but I love to see everyone having a good time outside, and as it gets a little warmer, more time can be spent there. Today the big excitement was the giant icicles hanging from our roof. I was begged to take a rake and knock some down for them, and then they sucked on them (I personally wouldn't lick anything that came off our roof, but I'm not them...) and made sculptures with them outside. I shoveled the driveway and the front steps, something I always forget to do until we have a treacherous ice slick and people are nearly breaking their necks getting to the cars. We watched the movie "I Know What You Did Last Summer," which isn't the most horrific of the horror movies out there (though I do recall watching it at the movie theatre in Squires Student Center at Virginia Tech and being petrified to walk home!), so it seemed an acceptable choice for 11 year olds desperate to watch edgy movies but not ready for something too sexual or violently horrific. What I forgot is that the language in this flick is really not very, ahem, clean. It was the "f" word every minute or so. Not that they haven't heard that coming straight from their dear mother's mouth at the same rate many times. But still....

And then we played my number one favorite game, Ticket to Ride. I think I converted Kerry, or at least hope I did. It was interesting playing with four players--in some ways, perhaps less cutthroat than with 2 or 3 players, since we could use double paths. And I see how one can play online, either against the computer or other players, which could be very dangerous to my time management. This game wins out above Settlers because it is shorter and doesn't require such a heavy amount of setup and preparation nor such a heavy refresher course on the rather complex rules and procedures of play. Plus it's harder to really stall on a turn in Ticket to Ride. You can get deep into trades and multiple people building on a turn, which can make Settlers go on for quite a while. Oh yeah, and I won. That always makes me like everything!

I missed my little people. Rutledge is just so enchanted by snow that it's hard not to have a smile on your face when you see him putting on his snow pants and his hat and boots and when he comes in with his bright red cheeks (I'm loving the eczema a bit less...). He is just so cute when he is all curled up in my bed, too. I don't know how parents can stand to not sleep with their kids at least part of the time. There are plenty of times that I enjoy my privacy and solitude at the end of the day, but right now, looking over at his little feet sticking out of his Mario Kart Wii pajama bottoms and his little hands tucked up under his belly while he sleeps on my bed. I cannot believe he is going to be five in about 2.5 weeks. Even though I want him to become more mature and stop with the baby talk, already, I still am not ready to not have a really little boy.

There was at least a foot of snow here and about 6.5 inches or so in Williamsburg. This is such an awesome winter so far! Come on, snow, bring it on again!