Valentines

We had a wonderful Valentine's Day. Well, except for the part where Adam woke up at 6am and decided that THE DAY SHOULD START RIGHT NOW. Good thing he's cute! The painters were here most of the day, fixing the last piece of fachia (spelling?) board and doing the final touch ups, mostly with our fabulous "Vulcan Blue" paint. I am really, really pleased with how everything looks. Final pictures will come when we get the gates installed and painted this upcoming week. I am feeling so disgustingly house proud this past week, probably a combo of the painting, and the fact that while Ellie was over at Gigi's house I got everything cleaned fairly well (mostly because I didn't want the workers to think I was a lazy turd, sitting on the couch while Adam napped.)

The patio cover has already made a huge difference in the temperature of the family room.

Usually this portion of the family room is a sun drenched sweat lodge. Now, not so much.

It's funny to me that while the back side of the house is so much shadier and cooler, the front side is much brighter, since we had the willow trimmed (high and tight, as Tim likes to say.)

But back to our Valentimes - in the morning we went for a run, and this very nice lady offered Ellie a mylar balloon shaped like a bear. Ellie was all over it, because she said it was a friendly bear. I spent the next two miles with the dang thing smacking me in the face or arm. I was surprised my sweat didn't wear off the paint.

Once we were all cleaned up, we went over to Lexi's for a Valentines Day celebration with our besties:

The dapper Dans

The ladies, doing some good snacking

We brought some lemon cupcakes that we'd made the night before and decorated in the morning. It was a fun project for Ellie.

She is getting so good at baking. She can now crack her own eggs (best to check for shell before you continue mixing though) and she is learning how to do a level measure. Her only real problem is that she doesn't look to make sure she has the measuring cup fully over the lip of the bowl before she turns it over. I spend a lot of time saying "no big deal, we can clean it up."

Here she is applying jimmies, and smiling her "creepy smile." She is a nut. And for those wondering at home - I already owned all of these heart shaped things, before Valentines. We like to be festive around here.

Since we were making lemon cake, I joked that we should let Adam taste a slice of lemon and take pictures of his sure to be ridiculous face.

He bit straight in and cried for more, the weird little dude.

And after nap time, we went to the mailbox and found that Mila had sent us all a tasty Valentine present!

The kids had dinner with Gigi and Grizz, and we had a small dinner party. Dawn and Jake came over, and Dawn made a veritable feast for us and three other friends. We had baked brie as an appetizer (YUM) and then beef tenderloin, mashed potatoes, roasted brussel sprouts and wine, all cooked to perfection. I made sticky toffee pie and for once, DID NOT BURN IT. It was a major triumph. And when things wound down, we sat outside on the new patio and chatted. A lovely, lovely Valentines.