My husband is out of town at a conference for three nights and I’m solo parenting our three kids. It’s going pretty smoothly, partly because the kids are in school all day while I’m at work, partly because they get to talk to their Dad on Skype before bed, and partly because they are just pretty great kids. I like hanging out with them. They’re kooky, hilarious, and completely awesome.

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Yesterday morning, my husband and I got the kids up, fed, dressed, and onto the school bus. And then we drove up to the local ski hill without them.

Said ski hill had a 50% off promotion, we don’t have season’s passes this year, and we had never been skiing without the kids since taking it up this past Christmas break. Throw in the fact that we’ve been dealing with everything from child anxiety, to stomach flu(s), to Strep throat, to job layoffs and WE NEEDED A DAY OF FUN.

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We’ve had one illness after another in our house for, oh, FOUR WEEKS NOW. At first I was pretty discouraged and frustrated, but now I find it all a little bit humorous. I’m pretty sure that we’ve broken records in the amounts of nasty bodily fluid excretions, and it still keeps happening. The gift that keeps on giving. Or something.

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My husband and I kiss (peck) goodbye in the morning and we kiss (peck) hello when we get home from work. We will sometimes get schmoopy in front of the kids and have a (long, drawn out) kiss (because we want to mortify them). We generally keep our passionate (BARF) kisses for the bedroom.

This Stir article, “10 Things You Didn’t Know About Kissing” is a good read. One of the interesting facts:

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Last month, I posted a photo of my husband and I on our wedding day on Instagram as part of the monthly photo challenge. In my description, I stated that I’ve always thought it would be neat to wear my dress again - I love it so much - and a fun idea would be to get a group of girlfriends together and go out for dinner in our dresses. As I usually do, I also sent the photo to Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr. Later that day, I had a stranger contact me via Flickr mail with the following message.

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I’m a huge proponent of date nights (as you all know) because it is far too easy to get caught up in your daily lives that are full of work and routine and activities and kids and stuff. A reader of mine sent me the link to The National Marriage Project and their report called The Date Night Opportunity.

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As we all know, Valentine’s Day (or Love Day, for the old school Simpsons fans) is next week. The merchandise has been out since the day after Christmas and it’s all you hear about on t.v. or online. Gift guides and date ideas and giveaways, oh my!

I’ve mentioned before that my husband and I don’t really celebrate Valentine’s Day. It started out because we didn’t want to buy into the commercialism, and we went on regular date nights as it was. There has been the occasional Valentine’s Day where we’ve surprised the other with something, but we usually have the “We’re not buying presents, RIGHT?” conversation and we both stick to it. Usually.

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She is so easily mockable, Miss Gwyneth, what with her GOOP advice. It’s hard to take parenting advice from someone who has a nanny/cook/personal trainer.

Especially when she says things like this:

“I have little kids in school. I want to maintain my marriage and my family, so I have to be here when he comes home.”

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