Valentine's Day 2015

We had a wonderful Valentine's weekend.  On Friday, Collin had a school friendship party, and Maya and I had a play date with friends.  I left them in Collin's room Friday morning while I changed, and walked in on them reading together.  

Warms this book-nerd mommy's heart!

Snapped a few more iphone pictures at school drop off - 

Giving her brother a kiss - 

Then we met up with some friends on a gorgeous spring day in Texas.

Maya enjoyed playing with my friend Rachel's 8-month-old daughter, following her around saying "baby."  She lounged in the swing -

And serenaded everyone on the steps to the slide with her ABC-Twinkle, twinkle- Baa Baa Black Sheep rendition - 

After Maya's nap, I picked Collin up from school and headed to drop off the kids with Grammy and Brownie.  Then I turned around and drove back home to meet up with Cas and drive to dinner with our friends.  Before we had even started our whole 30 (30 days of just meat, veggies, fruit & nuts), we had planned a Feb 13th celebration dinner.  And we went to town - bread, wine, and an AMAZING cookie cake Lindsay made us.  We had such a fun time at a delicious restaurant that was new to almost all of us.

Despite having no kids on Saturday, I woke up at 5:30am coughing from this obnoxious head cold.  But I enjoyed a calm morning, and then Cas and I planned to see American Sniper.  The movie theater was so packed that after spending 20 minutes trying to find parking, we called it a day and decided to go to the driving range.  After hitting a bucket of balls, Cas suggested we play some holes.  He went in to the golf office to see if we could hit just a few holes, and the initial person was going to charge him the full (municipal course) rate of $37 per person.  He negotiated with the manager who ended up letting both of us play for $23.  This is hilariously wonderful to me - it was a situation where it never would have occurred to me to negotiate, though we definitely wouldn't have gotten our money's worth out of the full price cost.

So for the first time in my life, I played on a golf course.  I considered myself hugely successful in that my ball stayed on my hole the entire time, quite often I played my own ball, and of the six holes we played, I only lost one ball.  There was no one behind us - which was huge since our first hole took at least 25 minutes - and Cas could create a few drills to teach me how to get the ball out of the sand trap.  We had a great Valentine's date.

Meanwhile with my parents, Maya and Collin were enjoying the morning at the park -  

My parents' neighbor has a cute puppy named Dash.  Maya brings him up in conversation daily.  She asks about Grammy, Brownie, Dash - in that order - all of the time.  So of course as soon as my parents get them out of the car, they run to see if Dash is outside.  

Saturday evening, we had a fun, casual family dinner.  My Aunt Debbie stopped by and read with Maya while we got dinner unloaded from the take-out bags -

We ate some Cuban food, finished off with heart sugar cookies Collin and Grammy had made, and then burnt off that sugar in a foam sword fight -

 No mercy for Maya

Silly faces while swords are swinging -

Collin got a taste of his out-sized medicine -

The boys battle -

And wrapped up the night with a group shot or two -my grandmas, my parents, and my kids -

Sunday morning, Cas and I mistakenly changed clothes for church at the same time, leaving Maya in the living room for about 2 minutes unsupervised.  And in that short time, she found, tipped over, and then covered herself with unsweetened cocoa powder.  She tromped into my closet leaving chocolate dust and footprints in her wake.  Our sweet destroyer -