Valentine's Day

Good ol' St. Valentine made this week special. Being on a tight budget, our celebratory gestures stayed rather low-key. Julia and I both wore Valentine's socks; we made Daddy's peanut butter and jelly sandwich into a heart shape for his lunch; and Julia slipped a little Valentine into Daddy's back pack for him to find. Later in the day she made him a special Valentine's necklace at playgroup which, as you can see from the picture, made him practically swoon with excitement. Julia's favorite part of the day was receiving valentines and Valentine's candy from her friends Hannah, Sammy & Ezra, and Madeline. Daddy's favorite part of the day was the Pasta al Forno I made him for dinner that was set on as elegant a table as I could muster without lighting the long-stemmed candles. (We even had artichoke-heart folded napkins!) My favorite part of the day was the beautiful sonnet Justin wrote to accompany the volume of Jane Austen novels he gave me. After Julia went to bed (another celebratory gesture, as this picture testifies), Justin and I enjoyed large pieces of the greatest witness of my love for him which I could concoct: a non-fat chocolate marbled cheesecake. (I don't want him dying young!) So all in all, between a 19 month old cupid, Jane Austen, fine Italian cuisine, masterful poetry, chocolate, AND cheesecake, we figure this was about the best Valentine's ever.

The other exciting event of the week was getting to go out to a movie. The tight budget aforementioned restricts our options to the public library and BYU's International Cinema; this week we lucked out and got to see Sense and Sensibility on the big screen. Jini canceled all her other plans and agreed to baby-sit Julia at the last minute, bringing her boyfriend who had come up for the weekend along with her. Apparently he had some real problems bonding with Julia--a trait very important to Jini--because she broke up with him not two hours later. We were only too glad to be of service. So ended our week of love.