Happy Valentine's Day

We had a Valentine's Dinner at home tonight. On the menu was stuffed manicotti, salad, broccoli, bagels toasted in the oven with butter & garlic salt, chocolate dipped strawberries and sparkling cider - which my kids think is so grown up to drink. Since we were trying to create somewhat of a Valentine's dinner we got out candles and then I remembered I had gotten rid of those candle holders "that we never have used since we got them at our wedding". I scrambled to make holders with leaves & champagne glasses. It worked for me. Brooke wanted to put the "sparkling cider" in a bucket with ice and now I am left wondering where did she learn that?

So back to our evening...did I mention the attire? Some came in sweats, some with uncombed hair and some without shoes but it was still a pretty nice evening. I did spend some time in the kitchen, there was no busboy to clean up the dirty dishes but...I do have leftovers for lunch tomorrow and that works for me since tomorrow is sunday. I love doing leftovers for sunday lunch. I actually get a day of rest for the most part!



And just in case you hadn't thought too much about chocolate covered strawberries...I will leave you with this.

Crazy Hair

Awanas has been a new adventure for the kids this year. And they are really enjoying it. They have alot of theme nights and one of them the other week was crazy hair night. Lindsay fell asleep on the way so I wasn't able to get a picture of her but here is Ryan with his hair. He wasn't sure he wanted anything done to his at first. I had planned to buy some colored hair spray but ran out of time. I am not sure he would have went for it though. It was traumatic enough to spike it with gel. Once he got there and realized what was going on he was good to go.



Brooke was all over this one. She had participated in spirit week at school last year and here is her results. A cup hidden inside the hair can do amazing things! Here is Brooke & Olivia. Two goofy girlfriends...

Brooke's Dalmation Cake

At our school auction last fall one of the items up for auction was a cake decorating class. Prior to the class each child had to decide what animal face they wanted to decorate (they had a list to choose from). A couple girls chose a kitten, one a brown puppy, another a lion and Brooke chose a dalmation dog. The cakes were ready for them to ice when they arrived. They had fun picking what kind of icing to ice with, icing the cake with the star tip, spray painting the color on and picking out candy for the finishing touches. Thank you Malinda and Marlene!