I know we've only completed the first full week of February, but it seems to me like it is already zipping by, especially since Valentine's Day is Sunday - which is weird! I say weird because it feels like it's kind of snuck up on us, and also, I can't help thinking back to last Valentine's Day. Last year, we dined in a beautiful restaurant and then Josh surprised me by taking me to the theater where we watched Casablanca (one of my favorite movies) on the big screen, with the music played live by the Oregon Symphony.

It still goes down as one of those moments of 2020 that I hold dear and look back on so fondly now that all of those things are no longer...happening. This year will be a little different. May I suggest that you click on over to my dear friend + writer Susan Alexander Yates - she recently wrote a blog post on How to Do Secret Valentines that is a great family building opportunity!

I don't think we've settled on plans for Valentine's Day yet - we haven't discussed it too much - (Editor's Note: Is this a hint?) but either way we'll be together and that is honestly all I care about.

Onto this week's menu!

Happy February, friends - we're one month closer to hitting that spring season and I cannot wait for a little more sun! However, here in the north Willamette Valley, if you look closely, you can see buds already starting to take shape on the trees and plants.

Which reminds me, I should probably get outside (or send someone outside...) and rake up the rest of those leaves that came down in the fall and winter. It's been so wet that I haven't been able to get it done!

I appreciate your understanding while I took last week off from posting on here. If you missed my post on social media, last weekend we went on a little winter vacation, and after packing my computer and notes, I decided that ya know what - I actually wanted to not have to work through my mini-vacation. It was so nice to simply have that time with my family. I never opened my computer and I let the emails pile up (yikes!). We just played in the snow, read, ate, and rested a bit (even though it was a really short trip).

When we got home, I immediately began focusing on potty-training Ruby and that is almost like its own full time job, as many of you undoubtedly know! In addition to taking time off for vacation, I've also decided to scale back some of the social media stuff and focus on helping Ruby be successful. Potty training deserves an extra amount of attention when you focus on that, and I just want to limit some of my distractions. She's doing well, but it may take some time...and that is okay.

Enough potty talk. On to this week's menu!

Hello, friends! I hope you were all able to enjoy a nice three-day weekend, if you were fortunate enough to have one. We got a few things done around the house, went on a date night, played games, did laundry, and watched movies. Oh, and ate food! When Josh and I went out on our date night, we tried one of the local restaurants in our area we'd never been to before, and the food was delicious, but the portions were huge! I ordered the pot roast for dinner and I swear I had a whole 3-lb chuck roast on my plate! Needless to say, I could barely make a dent in it so we took it home. On Sundays after church, we usually come home and eat leftovers, but Josh made the most delicious sliders out of the leftover roast - it's given us an idea for a recipe to share with you guys, so stay tuned for that!

Other than that, we're going to be headed out of town for a few days later this week for some fun in the snow with the kiddos. Each January, we try and escape for a few days away to give the kids a winter experience - ya know, go play in the snow. We're happy and grateful that we're able to do that again this winter.

I'll mention something interesting you might look into if you do have a three-day weekend, thanks to the MLK Jr Day holiday. Oftentimes, people spend time volunteering on this holiday, and, for a lot of folks, that is not an easy thing to do in the middle of the pandemic! Josh's employer shared an opportunity with their employees for virtual volunteering this holiday that is actually open to anyone - the Smithsonian has setup a "digital volunteer" portal, and one of the projects on there right now is an effort to transcribe the historical records of the Freedmen's Bureau. According to the Smithsonian, "Congress established the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands in 1865 to assist in the reconstruction of the South and to aid formerly enslaved individuals transition to freedom and citizenship." Essentially, this effort is a project to transcribe these old handwritten records into a digital, searchable database. Check it out - it's not easy, but at least it's something meaningful you can do while you're stuck at home! If your kids are a little older, you can involve them, too. Josh, Eden, and Christian were cracking away at some especially tough pages earlier this week!

Onto this week's menu!

Hey, friends, so...how is the beginning of January treating you so far? I hope you all had a great weekend - at the moment, I'm writing this post on Friday, so I still don't know what the weekend holds for us, but I know we'll celebrate Josh's birthday and I'll have made a feast of some kind for him!

In cased you missed it, I shared some thoughts over at Club31women.com last week. I called it "Couch to Table 2021" (a play on "Couch to 5K"). The post is about our family transitioning back to the dinner table after eating at the couch for quite a bit of the year. I also share a recipe for Garlic Spaghetti, which can be found on my blog, too.

Onto this week's menu - this week, Grace and I are going to make dinner together and the kids have requested tater tot casserole and taquitos, so you will find those dinners on the menu, too.

Here's what we're cooking: