11 years (mushy gushy alert)

Hooray!  We've been married for 11 years.  The traditional anniversary gift is steel.  We think we are going to go a different route and get a king size bed.  We now have a nightly visitor (Katie).  She crowds us and even has the nerve to sleep yell at us for messing up "her" covers.  Send her back to her own bed you say.  Yeah, if either of us were coherent without first having to down a cup of coffee, we would. 

On a more romantic note, we celebrated with dinner at Bonnie Ruth's.  We talked about how much we still like each other.  That was good.

While reading The Velveteen Rabbit to Katie the other day, I came across this:

"You become.  It takes a long time.  That's why it doesn't happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.  Generally, by the time you are Real, most of the hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby.  But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real, you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

In this excerpt, the skin horse (That's what he's called.  See for yourself.) is explaining how toys become real and how special they are once that transformation happens.  When I read this, I thought about how Jon and I started as a couple.  Lots of romance and warm fuzzies.  While that isn't gone completely, things have changed to a deeper more secure relationship.  We are absolutely becoming real to each other and loving each other even in our shabbiest moments. 

Valentine's Day (pinterest edition)

So I planned to make 15 different crafts from pinterest to celebrate Valentine's Day. Pictured here are the ones we got around to. 

 1.  Heart shaped crayons

 

 

These would have been cute to include with Katie's handmade cards (see #2 below), but after peeling, peeling, peeling we ended up with too few crayons for her class.  This craft was a literal and figurative "stinker".  Kate helped with the color sorting, but soon lost interest in the peeling and went off to play.   She rejoined me for the melting, however, she was appalled by the crayon smell wafting from the microwave.  Most appalling though was when I dumped the melted orange colors all over the microwave.  I left it in the sink to solidify.  Best husband award goes to mine, since he ended up scraping the wax off later.

2.  Handmade cards

Katie made Valentine cards using this kit and coordinating washi tape.  Below you can see the help offered by Little Sis.  Mostly throwing Valentines and working on her puzzle book.

I pick up the pieces of this puzzle book 22,563 times a day.  Guess that means she LOVES this book.

It is really exciting to see how Katie's writing has developed in the past year.  She is now able to copy the names of her classmates from the list or write them as I spell them aloud.

Two of my favorite Valentines.  See Char in the background there?

3.  Cookie Pops with Jello frosting

We had a cookie pop making play date the day before the 14th.  It was going great until I stopped reading the recipe and attempted to put the sticks in after the cookies baked!  Did not work. 

The kids rolled with it (get it?  it's cookie dough humor).  Char is loving the jello frosting.  Mixing it up was probably the most fun for the youngsters.

4.  Pink milk hearts

 

The grand finale of our V-day celebrations:  pink milk frozen in to heart cubes.  I used the pink milk recipe from Weelicious and a new non-crayola tainted ice cube mold to whip these up.  Very tasty, if not very well photographed.