Valentine's Day Celebrations

I am so excited to start holiday traditions with Lyla!  She's still a little young, but I wanted to do some Valentine's Day-themed activities with her anyway.  My sister, Emma, flew in from Ohio to visit with us, so we picked her up from the airport and let her join in on the fun!  First, I wanted Lyla to help me make and decorate some sugar cookies.  She's showing some interest in helping me bake and cook, so I wanted to include her in the process.  They tasted so good!  Once they cooled, I wanted Lyla to decorate a few.  This proved to be a little challenging.  Lyla didn't know how to get the icing out of the decorating tubes (in fairness, you have to squeeze really hard!).  She then decided to punch holes in the cookie with the icing tubes instead.  Then, at some point, she started wondering whether the cookie tasted good.  Following Emma eating a cookie and saying "Mmm! Declicious!", Lyla dove right in and stuffed her face.  We'll try decorating cookies in a few months again and see what happens.

I made an attempt at a Valentine's Day-themed dinner, complete with heart-shaped ravioli.  I take great pride in Lyla not being a picky eater, but for some reason she did NOT want to eat the red ravioli!  Not sure what the deal was, but something about the red ravioli totally grossed her out.  That didn't stop her from eating 5 of the regular-colored raviolis though!

My Valentine's Day surprise for Dustin went terribly wrong this year.  I had Lyla help me make heart shapes on Dustin's card by overlapping her thumb prints, then I cut out a bunch of hearts to "heart attack" Dustin's car he had parked at the BART station.  I didn't want to decorate his car too early, because I was planning on putting chocolates and some of the cookies in the trunk and I didn't want them to melt.  Well, apparently we waited too long because when we got to the BART station we couldn't find Dustin's car!  He then called me right on cue and told me he came home early to surprise us.  We still got his car when we came back home and showed him the surprise.  Dustin brought home some wonderful flowers for me and set up appointments for a pedicure for my sister and I - so sweet!

Lyla got spoiled this year with some Valentine's Day presents, complete with some fancy crayons and scented bubbles from mom and a necklace from dad.  She loved showing off and wearing all her gifts - she was in heaven!  Now we are looking forward to the next big holiday!