xoxo

Valentine’s Day snuck up on me this year. Somehow Josh’s interviews and the emotional roller coaster that comes with them coupled with a week of digging ourselves out of and playing in the snow overshadowed the day of love. Before I realized Valentine’s Day was coming, it was here. All I can say is, Happy Valentine’s Day! For more than a year I have been saving a box of valentines for the girls to send out. But, I guess I will have to save them one more year before I am organized enough to get them in the mail on time.

I have heard, from those of you who listen to the news, that Philadelphia has had more snow this year than it has had in over 100 years. All I know is that there is A LOT of snow outside and there is NO WHERE to put it. Our adventures this week have all centered around NOT moving the car, lest we have to park again. I drove Josh to school Monday morning for an interview. Parallel parking complicated by huge snow mounds and ice patches was enough fun that I made him take cabs the rest of the week as the snow continued to come down.

We have had fun cooking creatively from food storage and spending time together at home. When a front loader eventually made it to our street to scrape up the compressed snow and ice, he created by far the biggest mountain we have seen in Pennsylvania so far--right on the corner of our street. I guess it is nice to have a mountain view from our window again. Bundled from head to foot, we have gone on a few great exploring expeditions around the block this week. We traversed snow capped mountain ranges, skated on an ice patch covering the sidewalk, had a grand snowball fight, sledded on our bums down our mountain, and always made it home in time to be saved from the cold by a nice cup of hot chocolate. It almost felt like a holiday.

Contrasting sharply with the laid back atmosphere of a week of being snowed in was the pressure of the DIP week at Wharton. DIP stands for Dedicated Interview Period. Classes stopped this week and the interviews for summer internships began. For weeks Josh has been researching companies and applying for interviews. Then all of a sudden the preparation was over and the interviews began. Every day we would send Josh out the door looking like a million bucks and then pray our guts out until he came home. Fortunately it was Josh interviewing and he happens to be quite good at that. On the one hand it was incredibly stressful. On the other, we saw a lot more of Josh than we usually do and he would come home feeling excited and confident about the future. More than anything this week we felt the guidance and empowerment of the Spirit. We already have one really good offer for the summer from BCG, Boston Consulting Group, in Dallas, Texas. (Yes, I did tell Josh at the outset of all of this that I would go anywhere but Texas.☺ I knew I was cursing myself.) Having an offer, and a really good offer at that, is a huge blessing and a huge relief. Next weekend Josh is flying to California for a second round interview with another company. We are waiting to hear from several companies with which he has already interviewed and he has five or six more interviews that were rescheduled because of the snow. Obviously, we are far from settled, but we know we will be okay.

Kate and Jane have had a lot of time to pretend together this week. They love playing together now and I love to see them becoming such good friends. Frequently they will be in the middle of some game and they will both get the giggles. I don’t think there is a better sound in all the world! Jane wants to do everything just like her sister and Kate wants her to do everything just like she does. They sit by each other at dinner. They sing together. They color together. They read together. They make forts together. They fold their laundry together. Whenever Jane gets stuck with something her sister is right there to say, “Do it like this, Jane.” or “I will help you, Jane.” or “Say ___, Jane.” Those two will disappear and play imaginative games together for hours. That always results in a big mess, but the memories and the moments of relative peace are worth the clean up time.

Kate is in the princess stage now. She walks around the house singing “Once Upon a Dream” and makes Josh pretend to be prince Philip all the time. She was talking dreamily about princesses the other day so I told her that she was a beautiful princess too. She looked at me like I was crazy and said, “Girls who have pants are not princesses.”

I got up early on Saturday morning and walked over to a diner to meet some of my friends for breakfast. It was very cold and snowy but the sun was beginning to shine. You could tell it was the beginning of a beautiful day. As I walked down the narrow streets lined with row homes, I realized just how much I have come to love this city. It is quirky, inconvenient, and gritty in many ways, but it is also charming in it’s own right. Anyway, it was just one of those moments when you are grateful for the opportunities you have been blessed with.

From snowy Philadelphia we wish you a wonderful warm week and a Happy Valentine’s Day.