Be Mine

Since many of us were sick over the Valentine holiday, Ben and I postponed our 'romantic dinner date' till last night. This will most definitely end up being a memorable Valentines date and we didn't even leave the house! Ben planned the whole evening.... just one of the many many reasons why I'm glad he'll be mine forever. :) Cheesy? That's alright.

It was a night of cooking, feasting, and watching a romantic classic. We started the evening at about 6:30 and finished up dessert at almost 10:30. We tried to keep the kids occupied with toys and tv upstairs... Emma inched her way downstairs several times however (thankfully they all went to bed shortly after 7) and when we told her that we wanted her to stay upstairs so we could have some privacy, she tells us "well, if you want privacy you should have gotten a sitter and gone out to eat". Having a clever child definitely has its drawbacks. Ben did most of the cooking while I tried to clean up behind him - it was nice to spend time together in the kitchen. We went back and forth between preparing food, watching our movie An Affair to Remember while a course was cooking, EATING, and chatting over our candle-lit table - It was like eating at a fancy restaurant, only we did all the cooking... which ended up being really fun. (Note: We are not professionals at plating, nor am I skilled in the arts of food photography, but it all tasted amazing!)

First Course- Artichoke Bruschetta

Second Course- Sweetheart Salad Ben got fresh beets and we roasted them and then sliced and cut them into heart shapes... awww



Third Course- Mushroom Risotto This risotto included three types of mushrooms... mmmm.



Fourth Course- Peppercorn encrusted steak and Creamy Spinach.



Fifth Course (Dessert!)- Chocolate Pudding Cakes with vanilla ice cream


The food was literally incredible! Really, it was. But my favorite of the night was the dessert. PLEASE - everyone needs to try making these- I had never made a pudding cake like this before and it seemed really weird to be pouring water directly onto the batter into the ramekin, but like magic it somehow turned into a delicious crunchy on the outside, gooey in the middle cake. The best!

Thanks to my cute Ben for a wonderful evening at home.

Emma's Big Day

Emma is 5 today! Where has the time gone?! This girl has so many talents and admirable qualities (such as- great reader, kind older sister, adventurous, thankful, polite, inquisitive, logical, amazing memory, adept at using a computer, etc, etc, etc...) - I just feel lucky to have her in our family. :) Emma's birthday started out with her daddy waking her up to a rousing rendition of the Happy Birthday song before he headed off for work. I later sent her off to school in her "Birthday Girl" shirt along with little pink frosted brownies to give to her classmates at school. After school I surprised her and took her off to the Anthem Outlets to shop at Claire's for their 10 for $10 sale. (I learned from Tessa that at the Claire's outlet, they do this sale everyday!). Emma had just received 10 dollars from her Great Grandma Szymanski the day before and she was excited to get to spend it on some girlie stuff. I was impressed when Emma told Becca that she could pick something out too and that she'd buy it for her. Becca ended up getting the pink tub of lotion. :)




After spending Emma's birthday money, the kids played on the playground for a good long while, and then we did a bit of wandering ...












That night Ben came home from work and surprised Emma with a pink rose; she was thrilled!


We asked Emma what she was going to want for her birthday dinner a couple days back and she said - "chocolate chip pancakes, eggs, sausage, and chocolate bananas smoothies". She's always been particularly fond of breakfast foods and not so much of dinner foods, so this request came as not much of a surprise.


After dinner Emma got to open her presents. This girl is the best to give gifts to because she just showers us with hugs, thank you's, and huge grins -









We've got some trips coming up in the next couple months, so we thought Emma would appreciate her very own girlie suitcase for traveling - we were right! Who would have thought a 5 year old could get so excited over a piece of luggage :)

One of Emma's gifts was a game called Qwirkle (kind of like Dominoes and Scrabble combined) - we played it all together and, maybe we're nerds, but it was really fun! It's not a kid game really, but younger ages can play it a bit and get the hang of it. Emma really liked it and was rubbing it in my face when her and daddy won. :)









So, Happy Birthday to my sweet Emma! It was definitely a fun day - good thing there are many more birthdays coming up in the near future to keep us all entertained... let the birthday season begin!

Very random: Ladies, watch this - saw it last night on the tv and laughed myself silly :)

It's Valentines Day!

Happy LOVE day everyone! :) Even though we had a stomach bug going through the house this weekend, we still had a pretty good couple days. Sadly, we had to postpone Emma's friend birthday party till next Saturday, but the good part of that is that I have a little more time to get ready for it (I'm REALLY excited about it, so stay tuned till next week for some fun party pictures!). Anyway... on Saturday Ben and I got the girls balloon bouquets and big heart suckers for their Valentine gifts. I don't have pics of Emma with her balloons because she was feeling pretty sick at this point.




For Valentines Day we had heart shaped pb&j, pink fruit smoothies, and m&m's for lunch. :) Emma told me "this is the BEST Valentine's lunch EVER mom!". Well, isn't she nice.




Our Valentine Post Office ended up being a real hit the past couple weeks. We've been collecting most of the Valentines we've been giving each other on our fridge, which ended up being pretty fun decor - I definitely plan on doing this again next year. As you can see, the girls got very "artsy" with their Valentine creations...


I felt like I was pretty lame with the Valentines we gave out to Emma's class and at Becca's playgroup this year, so I thought we'd try something a little cuter to give to Ben's family - since we'd be seeing them in the evening. I printed the cards out from style crush... aren't they cute?! I'm glad there are people out there that are so creative that I can mooch off of. :)


Later we headed off to Grandma and Grandpa Dangerfield's house and celebrated more with a red and pink Valentines dinner...


While there we also got to do a little birthday celebration for Emma. She is turning FIVE this week! Oh my goodness! I remember being 5 myself and thinking that it was so cool that I was a "whole hand". She got some lovely dresses from the Lee's and from Grandma and Grandpa (I'll get some pics of her all dressed up later this week). She also got some great writing stuff (she's really getting into drawing and writing lately) - she got an Alice in Wonderland journal from her Grandma Dangerfield and some great Tinkerbell writing accessories and cute bracelet from her Grandma and Grandpa Szymanski. We have such great family and Emma loves them all so much - it's nice to see her have such a great start to her birthday already. And there is still more birthday fun to come!

Plenty of PINK

I took Becca (and Jake, of course) to playgroup this morning for a bit of Valentine fun. Outside of the big holidays at the end of the year, Valentines Day is my favorite! And in some respects, maybe I like it even more so than the bigger celebrations because it's low stress, simple, and fun. And I like hearts and the color pink. :) Leah arranged this activity and I loved her idea to hang up personalized pink sacks along a line with clothespins for the Valentine exchange. So fun having clever friends!

Sweet tooth? YES!

We went to the Chocolate Affaire in downtown Glendale this weekend - we just call it The Chocolate Festival. Who would have thought, but we ate lots of chocolate! Emma ate chocolate covered marshmallows, I ate chocolate covered strawberries (by far the best!), and Becca ate chocolate covered bananas. Jake ate little bits of all of ours. :) Later on Ben picked up some chocolate covered peppers... no thank you! We wandered through various booths, ate food, rode down a really big slide, and got a tour of the candy/chocolate factory nearby. It was at the store there that Ben bought the chocolate covered peppers and the girls picked out a very big caramel apple. Emma gave it a go after dinner that night and decided she didn't really like it (what the heck?!) - oh well... I ate it. hehe. (Note: the pics below include lots of eating...)

We look very into our food, and that's because we were

Jake happily chewing on a piece of churro

The month of LOVE ♥

Oh February, how I LOVE thee! I love Valentines Day and how it turns the whole month into the month of LOVE. :) To encourage the most love possible, I put together a little mail center in our kitchen for exchanging Valentines for the next couple weeks. I got the little red mailboxes from the dollar bins at Target last month... oh Target, how I also love thee! The supply bucket includes clippings of red, purple, pink, white, and black paper, as well as glue, hole punch, red and pink tissue paper, heart stamp, scissors, heart foam stickers, valentine colored markers, crayons, and colored pencils, and pink craft ribbon. And with the kids having easy access to it, I bet the supplies will last a couple days if I'm lucky. ;) As a family we made each other our first heart-filled notes of the 'Valentine season' for our FHE activity this evening. The idea is that we'll each be able to open up our mailboxes after dinner each evening to discover new Valentine treasures. Jake has his own mailbox too... I told the girls to put things in there that he would enjoy chewing on... because that's what he does with everything he gets his hands on. :)