Valentine's Day-4 days late

My grandma made Meili this outfit last year, and I waited patiently for it to fit her. Then I kept waiting for a day with snow on the ground to take some super cute pictures. Well, as we all know, days with snow on the ground have been few and far between this year. So the day I finally decided the time was right- Meili had already grown too tall for the pants, and she was not in a picture-taking mood.

She quickly became very demanding talent. I would give her M&Ms and she would look up-not smile-but look up for ONE picture. Then she would look down until I gave her more M&Ms.

The outfit is still cute though! Thanks Grandma!

Yes, I know, lowriding.

As I've mentioned previously, she has developed quite the shoe fetish. This is a regular occurrence in our house these days. The only bad news: she thinks that she gets to leave every time she puts shoes on.

For Valentine's Day this year, Josh and I made a bet on the Superbowl. In my defense, I knew it was a bad bet, and was sure I was going to lose from the start. I spent a good amount of time figuring out exactly what I wanted the terms to be, and I had it figured out so that we both had a fair shot at winning. Then, Josh said that the spread was 2 1/2 points for the Patriots, so he talked me into betting on the spread. I told him that I knew the Patriots weren't going to win, if only for the fact that I was rooting for them, but he said that I was getting the better deal, because they were the favorites-whatever. Well, as we all know, they lost, and the stakes of our bet was that the loser would plan our Valentine's Day date.

I was actually kind of excited about that part.

I wanted to do something fun, and lighthearted, that Josh and I had never done together before. My first choice: paintballing. But I didn't plan far enough in advance, so we didn't have a group of people to go with and I wasn't sure how that would work. Plus, it's winter. So I found a place online-Toad's Fun Zone. They have go-carts, laser tag, mini golf, batting cages, etc. etc. Josh had Friday off, so after eating yummy crepes for breakfast, we asked his parents to babysit and headed to Ogden.

I realize now that it wasn't logical for me to think that a place like that would be open in the middle of the day, in February, on a school day. But in my defense, we looked at the website after the fact and it says that on Fridays from November-March it opens at 10:00, and we got there at 10:45-so I don't know what the deal was. But needless to say, our Valentine's date consisted of a 2 hour detour to Ogden and back, to give his parents a short visit. I felt like a complete idiot, but Josh was really nice about it. I have promised him that we will do my date someday.

We ate lunch at Center Street, came home long enough for the baby to have a nap. Then went bowling at the Fun Park-which was pretty much as expensive as Toad's would have been and less fun. But it was still fun.

Then we came home and I made our Valentine's Day dinner-which was my favorite part of the day.

Meili got a pillow pet for a valentine-but was more interested in the paper bag that Josh's tie came in.

The benefit of celebrating Valentine's Day late is that everything is on sale. I got her heart-shaped cup for $.99

We had spare-ribs, rice, vegetables, rolls, and (of course) sparkling cider. After the fact, Josh said that the green beans tasted funny and I told him it was asparagus. Yep, we're fancy in our house!

So, even with my huge oversight, we managed to have a really fun day together with our little family!

On Saturday, we went to the Aggie basketball game. Josh has been to a few games with Meili, without me, and in that time she has become TERRIFIED of Big Blue. Am I horrible mother for just laughing at her? He came down on a rope from the ceiling to start the game off, and all of a sudden she was clawing over me to try to get away from him. And you can see from our seats, that we were pretty high up, and he wasn't even close to her. The rest of the game, her eyes were scanning the stadium for him, and she was clinging to Josh and I.

Oh sweetie, you'll have to get over this aversion someday. I see a lot of Aggie games in your future.