Snow and Road Trips.

It was 8:30 pm on a school/ work night and we were sitting at a Mellow Mushroom in Roanoke, four hours from home. "Why do I always do this to myself?" I thought, as I fished around in the back of the road trip- destroyed Subaru for pajamas so I could have the kids change in the bathroom and sleep in the car.

Two reasons. 1) We had survived COVID albeit with a lot of wrecked holiday plans, and I felt like we needed to make up for lost time. More importantly, 2) I'm a Walters. And it's, like, a birthright to squeeze every last second out of long weekends and vacations. We have all been known, at one point or another, to go straight from the airport to work. May as well pass that on to the next generation.

It was actually our second road trip since our (long overdue) recovery, after a spontaneous jaunt to Pittsburgh to (sadly) see Grandma and Grandpa off on their trip back to North Dakota, and visit the truly excellent Carnegie Science Center.

Plus hotel pool hijinks, and a brief and miserably cold blizzard snowtubing adventure.

The kids had scored two teacher workdays for a long weekend win and Seth had class, so a road trip to Birmingham for the wedding of a friend was born. Which, of course, we kicked off with a stop at the Ryans'. (And more unexpected snow!)

How much the kids love a road trip makes my Mom heart happy, and F+F were up for adventure. We discovered an awesome Augusta climbing gym, a sketchy (but warm!) northern Alabama hotel pool,

a lovely civil rights park across from the 16th Street Baptist Church,

and (having been promised warmer climes), an unwelcome Deep South cold snap.

Kat and Bill's Sunday afternoon wedding was beautiful and funny and delightfully kid friendly.

And the reason that Monday evening found us eating late night pizza many hours from home is that we spent Monday morning at- no kidding- the best aquarium I have ever been to, in Chattanooga.

It was so good I bought the photo! (A distinctly un- Walters act.)

We eventually made it home, and spent the week doing midnight laundry and scavenging for lunchbox ingredients (the unfortunate side effect of vacation-maximizing.)

And then did another un-Walters thing, and spent an entire (freezing) weekend at home enjoying the mundane. (Playing "airplane" in the sunroom and cursing at the broken water rower.)

We rounded out January with swim school shenanigans and Costco finds,

snow and more snow,

a Bison win,

and the JAG Winterfest, at which Seth put in another bid for Dad of the year (and I enjoyed my annual reminder of why ice skating with kids is the absolute worst.)

We enjoyed our snowy January, but are hoping fervently for warmer weather (and looking forward to the return of Grandma and Grandpa!) in February.