February you need to go away, like, right now.

February and I have a love/hate relationship going on.  For me, it's mostly an all hate kind of thing.  It's cold, dreary and even with the hint of spring right around the corner it's hard road to get to the end of those twenty eight days.

In my head, I've been telling February to go fuck itself over twenty times a day.  It's like it's on repeat in my brain.

First we got sick.  Then we got better.  Then we had Valentine's Day and I made the off hand comment at my daughters party, "Holy Cow!  It looks like half the class is missing."  Turns out, half the class was missing and I know exactly what they gave me.  A horrible cold.

And the kids have been home for almost the whole month.  They had parent teacher conferences for two days followed up by Presidents' Day.  Not to be outdone, we had Winter Storm Q pound us and the kids were off another two days.  A State of Emergency was declared and it snowed.  And snowed and snowed and snowed.

Fuck you for that, February.

I thought it would be fun to go out and play in the, you know, snow.  Not so much.  It took over forty minutes to get into snow pants, socks, boots, coats, hats and gloves and even then Alex took a single step out the back door and retreated inside exclaiming he was done.  The girls went out for ten minutes only to retreat inside when they got snow in their mittens.  Ten minutes.

And to think we lived in North Dakota for ten years.

Because the kids have been off school so much, either because of planned events, sickness or snow days, they've been dysregulated.  They don't know what day it is, if they should be getting ready for school or what they should be doing.  It's been awesome.

I took a huge leap, put us on a schedule and did some homeschooling.

They hated it.  They hated me and they hated everything about being home and having to learn something.  I was cutting into their Minecraft time and by God they let me know about it.

I turned off the computers and they suddenly realized that, by God, I was being serious.

We studied, we learned and I think they had fun.

And when I asked, "Who wants to go outside and play?"  The forty minute bitch session was pared down to ten minutes and begging to be let out.  I guess they didn't have as much fun with me teaching as I thought...

They were out the door and in the snow in record time.

We made forts, threw snowballs and laughed.

You know where this would be pretty?
Some place other than my back yard, that's where.  

We dug out from our winter storm and things were getting back to normal.  Taking the kids to Tae Kwon Do, I fell in the parking lot.  I cursed February with my middle finger and a slew of beautifully strung together obscenities.

I'm sorry if you were in the minivan next to me when I went down but really?  That hurt like a mother.

We only had a few more days.

And then they said we were going to have another storm.  Bigger and badder than the last one.  Up to twenty inches of new snow on our already foot and a half.

Again, even prettier if this was your back yard.
Someone want to help me pick up branches?

That's exactly what we got.  Additional snow, snow days and more homeschooling.

I think my kids hate me.  I think I hate February more....but now I have one day left.

Just one day left in February and I can flip the calendar.  There's something about the promise of March.  Sure we live in Kansas and the threat of tornados looms large but we'd be out of February, into the promise of Spring.

I can do this.

I'll take my chances and risk tornados any day of the week just to get past the cold, snowy days of winter.