She's sitting with you, but her eyes are on the door

Man, you would not believe the weather we are having today (OK, maybe you would, but I'm a 5th generation Californian, so bear with me). Last night we got 3-4" of snow. Overnight the temperature rose, and it's currently 37 and sleeting. A lot. So the snow is melting and slushing and icy and we've got nasty pouring sleet. Poor Zion had to stay home from school today because we only have one car, and Robert needed it to get to work. I tried to take Zion. I got us all bundled up, set up the stroller, put the kids in, and headed out. But I hadn't even passed our neighbor's house before I was slipping on the road (the sidewalks were totally impassable) and unable to get any kind of traction. We live at the top of a rather steep hill, and I seriously doubt my ability to get down the hill with an 80 lb stroller in these conditions without any of the following happening: 1. falling 2. losing control of the stroller, or 3. dislocating my knee (for those of you who don't know I have luxating patellas, which means I dislocating my knees very easily. I'd guess I've done it 50 times in the past 22 years). So, I turned around and went home. Zion was terribly disappointed and cried and cried and stood in the sleet and didn't want to come in. I felt absolutely awful. So I suggested we do something fun at home and gave the kids some of fancy (and delicious) dried/candied fruit we got for Valentine's day, and let them watch part of a movie.

This afternoon Zion's friend Valentina is having a Valentine's day party. Her parents very sweetly offered to pick me and the kids up, since they live a couple miles away and I wasn't too excited about pushing the kids home (all uphill!) in the dark. Now I'm extra grateful to them for that offer! Vivienne, Valentina's mom, even baked the cake with egg replacer, since she knows Zion is allergic to eggs. When I told Zion about that his eyes lit up (he's used to not being able to eat the treats at birthday parties) and he said, "I bet it will be delicious!...That was very thoughtful of them, mama!"

In knitting news I'm working on a shawl to use up all the bits and ends of yarn leftover from other projects. It's fun, and the knitting is super simple, but the color arrangement is challenging since I want to have it come together as a whole piece rather than look like, well, the bits and ends of my leftover yarn!