spreading the love in hot pink leggings and neon orange Vans

Valentine's Day at our house was perfect. 

West loved the blanket that I sewed for him on my new sewing machine. 

Cas wore a sparkly black dress, hot pink leggings, and neon orange vans to her 6th grade Valentine's dance.

Her favorite dance? The very last one where she didn't have to have a partner.  Sorry boys, you're on your own for Valentine's.

Cali gave me a sweet valentine this morning.

I got to have a last minute lunch with my man at my favorite Mexican restaurant.

I started assembling a three layer, three tier wedding cake.  Red velvet cheesecake.

When I make a cake I like to make sure that the mess explodes all over the entire kitchen.

Cas helped me with dinner by "dehydrating the chicken."  Translation: Cas   defrosted the chicken.

We had some extra red velvet cake batter so we made some cupcakes and spread the love to some of our neighbors.

Don't forget our family dinner by candle light.

celebrating a year of love and friendship

I think Google nailed it this year:

Valentine's Day is a day to reflect on how amazing my relationship with The Man is.  It's a day to celebrate how we have loved for the other 364 days of the year. 

Valentine's Day is not a day to make up for the other 364 days.  It's not about gifts for us, but for simply enjoying each other and recognizing what we have the whole year through.

Valentine's Day, at our house, is a family affair.  Every year we eat our dinner by candle light. This picture is from last year:

This picture is hilarious, it looks like we just lit the table on fire, but I guess that's what you get when you take pictures with your phone.

So in reflection of my relationship with West, here's a few highlights from the past year, on why I love him so much, and how I know he loves me.

Hands down, he makes me LAUGH.

Our favorite saying to tell each other is, "I will seduce you with my awkwardness."  We are clumsy at best and down right ridiculous at our worst and that's perfectly fine with us.

Our life truly is a giant adventure.  We support each other in interests that we share, but also in interests that we don't share.  We are there for each other.  He's my biggest fan.  And I am his. (Some of these pictures are blurry, I'm sorry, but I want to add them because we had such a great year together).

Jane Wayne Day

Seals in the cove in LaJolla, CA

Scuba Diving

I love the we can work on our house together.  The planning, the compromising, the work itself has been so much fun.  And it makes me feel like I belong in the house with him.

Bathroom remodel

When I was trying to get the job with Attorney General's Office he sent me this text.

He was there to be my photographer for my new running phase.

Dirty Dash

Halloween Half

And I've been there for his riding stints.

Sand Dunes

County Fair

I'm always saying it, but he's my best friend.  I do everything with him simply because I want to.

He eats cookie dough with me. 

He knows my favorite author, and even knows my birthday now :).

Whoville dinner

Our anniversary

West and I don't put a lot of pressure on Valentine's Day.  There are usually no gifts, no cards, no fancy dinners out.  And we're okay with that.  We smile because we know we love each other, and maybe we hug a little more (if that's even possible), and touch a little more (again, possible?) and perhaps we'll say "I love you" just one more time today...

We do have some exciting things happening today as a family.  Cas is having her 6th grade Valentine's dance.  She has to dance with 16 boys and has given me the okay to stop by to take a couple of pictures of it.

I might try to get a better picture of our candle light dinner tonight... one that doesn't look like we've just set the table on fire.

Oh, and I did break our general rule of no gifts and made West a blanket on my brand new sewing machine.  But I would have made him the blanket anyway, it was just convenient that Valentine's was right here, so I utilized the day to give it to him.

So we'll do one more post tonight after all the fun is to be had.  Because even though we don't put a lot of pressure on the day, doesn't mean that we're not doing fun things with it.

googling hippo milk. candy gram service. secret admirer.

It amazes me how many people google "hippo milk."
I read it once on a fact website that hippo's milk is actually pink.  I was dumbfounded.  I did some googling on it myself and came up with yes indeed, hippos milk is pink.

And so I posted about it.  How could I not? It was such a random and ridiculous thing.

It has been my #1 post of all time since I posted it.  Even this month it's in the top ten. 

In my stats it tells me what people searched for to be shown my blog. 

hippo milk
pink hippo milk
pink hippo

These show up on my blog stats almost daily.

Of all the things to post about.  Who would have thought that a silly post on hippo milk would keep popping up like it has?

In other news, I'm super proud of Cali.  She used her birthday money to buy candy grams for her siblings at school.  The student council at the Elementary sells candy grams every year before Valentine's day to raise some money.One of the boys in our neighborhood that walks to school with the circus made mention that he never gets a candy gram from anyone. 

Guess what Cali did.  It makes my heart melt.

Casidee got a candy gram from "anonymous"... oooohhhh.... somebody has a secret admirer.

I found this dropped in the yard:

it must be really hard having to do two things at once. I feel really bad for you.

Yesterday I came home from work and was bombarded for requests to help with Valentine's boxes from the circus.  Tayler had brought a note home from her teacher saying she needed one so we put our heads together and came up with this:

I only helped her with the hot glue gun and the card hole.  She did everything else all on her own.  I think it turned out great.

Sean came home from his time with his mom and informed us that he still needed his box.  They, of course, were due at school today.  Everyone else got put on the back burner since they only wanted one, not needed one.

So last night we pulled out paper and boxes and the hot glue gun and set to work, while I cooked dinner.  We had a small time crunch with Sean having Cub Scouts and me needing to get to Young Women's.

Sean watches me move back and forth from helping him cut and glue paper, to watching the taco meat cooking on the stove and says, "Man.  It must be really hard having to do two things at once.  I really feel bad for you."

His box turned out like this:

we even cut the bottom off the top box, and a big hole in the bottom box so his cards will fall all the way through and have more room to fit. 

This weekend I get to paint the kitchen.  I think The Man is a lot like me.  He just needs time to get used to an idea.  To warm up to it.  I have a green light on both of my color schemes, well, using the compromise of not doing whole rooms but accent walls, and I'm definitely okay with that.  It's going to look amazing, I can't wait.

The circus must have been hungry last night because they ate all of the taco meat before I was able to get any.  The Man offered to make more while I was at Young Women's and I could just eat when I got home.  How would I survive without him?

So off I headed (with Sean in tow for Scouts) to make these awesome puppies with the Laurels.

{original idea came from here}

I thnk the pink and white ones are my very favorite.  They look so... dainty. 

And they celebrated my birthday with me.

I keep fighting the fact that I know I should probably eat healthier, but I just don't want to. 

Confession: I don't drink water.  Except maybe at night I'll drink a glass before bed.  And it's not that I don't like it.  I do.  I just don't reach for it.

So I bought this:

I need to drink three of these bad boys a day.  The lid even helps me keep track of how many I've had.

I'm sitting here thinking of how much water that really is... 

That didn't last long...

My boss and the Chief Investigator gave me $15 in a gift card to McD's for my birthday.  It would be rude for me to not use it.  Especially when the card said it was for my cokes.  (Do they have me figured out already or what?)

Valentine's cookies...

What I desperately wanted to do with my heart cookies...

Giddy

I'm feeling a little giddy. Not because it's Valentine's Day (though I DO feel giddy over my man, that's just a general everyday giddy that I lived a charm life to feel) but because I went from being a general working mom who does random cakes for the fun of it in the random spare time that I have, and some times I get around to posting pics of said cakes on my project blog... to being "Stephanie over at Circus Cakes". Hee hee I LOVED reading that. My lovely bribe project was featured on Bargain Divas and I felt COOL. I'm going to say it again, "Stephanie over at Circus Cakes". Sounds good doesn't it? Happy Valentine's! Enjoy that fact that you have loved ones in your life. And go vote for my wedding while you're at it. I AM bribing you after all ;).

Blue Man in Sin City

We have determined that taking trips with Wess and Ashley, and Aaron and Megan, are successful and extremely lucky. Proof #1, our cruise (the initial cheap price, the scooter chaos, the snorkeling etc etc etc) and proof #2, our Vegas trip. Wess got a hair brained idea Friday afternoon that we should take a trip this weekend, being Valentine's weekend. He calls West. Who's not a planner, but more of a doer, so he passed the planning on to me. We jumped from going to Mesquite, to Park City, to St. George, back to Mesquite, and then finally Wess and Ashley found discount tickets for the Blue Man Group (yes!) so Saturday morning we headed to Vegas. Crammed into a booth at Denny's. Reminding myself NOT to drink whatever Meg and Ash are drinking. They're both prego.
We bummed the strip all afternoon, peaking into this casino and that hotel. Seeing cool things, and not seeing cool things.

And seeing all together different and bizarre things.

We checked into our hotel (a nice one, just off the strip), where, after I managed to trip and land flat on my arse we grabbed dinner at a dumpy mexican place

with way too much red lighting

and THEN... Oh boy! We made our way to the Blue Man theater.

I LOVE LOVE LOVED them. The way two would just stop and stare at the third if he did something different from them. Oh I cried I laughed so hard. My stomach ached. And miracle of miracles, those discount tickets we bought the night before, were to a sold out show. See, that's what we mean, we have incredible luck when we all travel together.

West and I aren't really into Valentine's. He got a card when we got home that I hadn't even signed, and he had the kids give me a card the day AFTER Valentine's. Considering our lack of enthusiasm for the day, I love that we took this last minute get-a-way for it. If you ever get a wild hair, I would HIGHLY recommend the Blue Man Group. We want to take our kids some day. Did I mention I LOVED it?

P.S. Treasure Island has ruined their pirate show. Skip that part, totally not worth the wait, and certainly not family friendly. Unless you like cheesey jibes and a fake attack over closet space. Yes, closet space.

Heart attack

This kind of doorbell ditching is the best kind of all... The young women of the ward called me before hand to make sure we would be home, but the girls had no idea what was going to happen. We got heart attacked and the circus thought it was the craziest thing ever.