The Day of Love

Happy Valentines Day everyone! I feel like I've been horrible lately at doing cute holiday things with Carrie and yesterday I actually got out of my bah-humbug funk! We made heart shaped sugar cookies together!
When I was a kid, I loved helping my mom cook or bake, and I know Carrie already loves it too. Sometimes it's just easier to do it myself! Baking with kids takes a long time and can get messy! This time, however, I sucked it up and had her help me scoop the sugar, crack the eggs, mix with the beaters etc. I even felt super proud of myself for throwing in a "teaching" moment about counting/adding. (It went something like: "The recipe says we need three eggs. If we already put in two, how many do we still need?...")

Don't you love the random crown she's wearing? It's leftover from her birthday party and makes appearances in her wardrobe several times a week.

We had so many cookies that even after saving some for ourselves, we took a few plates to some friends, and sent some with Justin to work. They were really really good :)

When Justin came home from work he had a surprise for both me and Carrie. Carrie got a chocolate rose (which she pronounces "roe-zin") and I got a bag of Ghirardelli chocolates, some vanilla bean and some dark chocolate with strawberry filling. Lucky for us, Justin likes the vanilla ones and I like the dark chocolate strawberry ones! We were meant to be together! ;)

Tonight, we shared a babysitter with the Carpenters and Justin and I got to have a double date with Eli and Cori at Applebees! The food was delicious, as always, but the real perk (for me at least) was they had a caricature artist in the waiting-to-be-seated-area doing free drawings courtesy of the restaurant! We waited until after we ate to go see him and were told he was supposed to have been "off" for the night five minutes before! :( My face must have looked excited enough and then sad enough, that he stayed anyways and we were the last couple he drew! Whew!! I'm so excited we got such a cute picture! And for free! That's always awesome!

Overall we had a wonderful Valentines Day celebrating with the people we love!