Valentine's Day Weekend

I planned the February get-together for my ladies group.  We met at the Gilbert Farmer's Market on Saturday morning, ate brunch and then browsed the vendors.  Shireen and Joni were not able to make it, so we had another small group.

We met at the food trucks.  Then we split up in search of food. Lauren and I went to The Uprooted Kitchen truck, which is owned by Mr. Chad (Elliott's former OT and his wife).

I had a warm quinoa bowl with a chocolate cherry scone.  The iced coffee is from another vendor.  It was $5.  It was not worth $5.  The prices were not listed, sneaky sneaky sneaky, so I didn't know what I was paying until after I ordered it.

We asked some random dude to take our picture.  This one was nice.

The one of our crotches, not so much.

Lauren bought a loaf of bread from one of the vendors and then I insisted that she carry it around like a baby the rest of the morning.

We wouldn't be us if we didn't take some stupid pictures.

All of the above pictures were taken by Maryellen, Brenda and Lauren.  This is the only picture I took.  I was going to go and get a picture with Mr. Chad for Elliott, but they were really busy with customers and then I saw them drive down the street so obviously I lost my chance.

On Saturday night John and Maryellen came over for dinner.  I was going to be so good and take so many pictures so I could blog about the whole night.

And here's the picture I took.  Yep.  One.  The appetizer.  These were puff pastry cups with brie and raspberry jam.

We had homemade mac and cheese with bacon, caramelized onions and tomatoes for dinner.  And brownie cookies for dessert.  But, you'll have to take my word for it.

I had pulled off the blanket from Spencer's bed that afternoon.  Ginger took it as an immediate invitation to sleep on it.

She was still there the next morning.

Valentine's Day started out with presents.  Each kid got a Star Wars mug full of chocolate and a new watch.

And Winston came to visit!  He brought the kids boxes of chocolate.

Since I had just barely made it back to my pre-Christmas weight after 6 weeks of no grains, dairy or sugar, I thouht it would be a great idea to immediately regain all of it by having donuts for breakfast.

Spencer bought Elliott a minion stuffed animal.  He thought of it all on his own.  Sometimes I think maybe they won't kill each other before they reach their 20's.

We did a bunch of stuff around the house and ran a bunch of errands that day.  Nothing earth shattering.

There was pizza for lunch.

Then there was a delightful pink sunset in honor of the special day.  It was also Arizona's 104th birthday.  Happy birthday to my home state!

These three pictures were taken with my camera.

And these two with my phone. I think it's so interesting how different the pink is in them.

This was my phone.

We spent the entire day together as a family on Sunday and then, because Monday was a holiday, we did the same thing again.  It was lovely.  And by Tuesday I was ready for everybody to go away and leave me the hell alone.

Pre-Valentine's Day

Last week was a busy one.  We had stuff to do, places to go, projects to work on, Valentine's to make and dogs to care for.

Ginger got knocked out on Monday morning to have her teeth cleaned, vaccinations given, nails clipped and a skin tag on her eye removed.  She was still a little tired from the anesthesia when she came home.  The shaved spots on her legs are from the IVs.

They also shaved around her eye for the skin tag.

Elliott looked so cute in Spencer's hand-me-down Spiderman jeans on Tuesday.  I made him do a fashion show.

Spencer had early release from school on Wednesday.  He got home at 11:45 and we immediately loaded up and headed for lunch at TC Eggingtons in Mesa.  It was Spencer's special request.

Then we went to the Museum of Natural History.  We haven't been since before Christmas.  Nothing has changed.  Except nobody was there, which was really nice.

We worked on Spencer's Valentine's on Wednesday.

I gave him several pinterest options and he went with chips for his classmates,

and soap for his teachers (including specials teachers and the principal.).  Elliott picked soap for his teachers too.  There is no separate picture.

I got to go on a field trip with all the special education kids at work on Thursday.  I love billing for field trips.  They are the best days.  I took a picture of myself on the bus and texted it to Michael to say, look at what I'm doing with my work day.

I also like how the shadow of my nose is HUGE.  Seriously, I need shadow rhinoplasty. 

We took the kids to the IMAX theater.  These kids are on my caseload but I didn't edit the pictures because they're so dark to begin with I can barely tell who these kids are.

We worked on Elliott's Valentine's on Thursday evening.  He picked goldfish for his classmates.

We also worked on a big 2nd grade President's Day project all week.  It was a "folder" assignment with specific criteria for each part of the folder.  Spencer chose Theodore Roosevelt.  He turned it in on Friday.  I was ever so glad to send these kids off to school with their projects and Valentine's.  That type of stuff is just exhausting.

Oh, I forgot.  We also realized, on Friday morning, that Elliott had cut his own hair at some point last week.  It was very hard to photograph, but he has bald spots all over the back of his head.

I guess cutting your own hair is tiring, because Elliott took a glorious nap that afternoon.  I was at work.  This is the 2nd of 6 pictures Michael will take in 2016.  He'll take another probably in July.