Happy Valentine's Day! (Updated)

The kids had an early Valentine's party with some friends.  (We called it Friendship Day.  I've posted more pictures and details on my Mom Thoughts blog.)  Each kid got a sugar cookie and their own cup of frosting.  It was fun to watch them frost a cookie for the first time.

On Feb. 13th, I dropped a few hints to Kieran that ladies like flowers for Valentine's day.  So when his daddy got home that evening, he faithfully relayed the message.  Mike and I had some good laughs about Kieran's suggestions: "Dad, ladies like flowers for Valentine's day.  Costco and Fred Meyer have some nice ones!"  Good job, Kieran!  My two boys went out that night and got me a dozen roses that Kieran selected. He chose his favorite color, red.  :) Mike said Kieran held the roses like an Olympic torch through the store.  He proudly handed them to me when they got home.  I am so very loved!

On Valentine's morning, I made the family scrambled eggs and heart shaped strawberry pancakes.  For lunch, we went and got burgers and fries.  For dinner, Mike grilled delicious marinated steaks and I made oven baked veggies.  For dessert we had a homemade white chocolate raspberry cheesecake- yum!!  We ate dinner by candle light, which made absolutely no sense to Kieran.  (Today at breakfast he asked if we could turn the lights off.)  

It was a great Valentine's day, and we are so thankful to God for blessing us with the love of family. 

P.S.  I took Marisa to the doctor for her 2 year check up the day after Valentines.  She has gained 13 pounds and 6.75 inches in the 13 months that she'd been home with us!!  She is now a member of the one yard club as she's 36.5 inches tall now.  We are so grateful to have two healthy, thriving children.  

Marisa is Two!!

This is Marisa on her first birthday...she had been home from China for one month.

Here's our beauty a year later.  Wow, it's amazing that we've been blessed with a whole year together.  Time flies!

I made cupcakes this year for Marisa's big day...tried out an idea I saw on Pinterest.

All our plans to have a special outing fell through, so we went home and had cupcakes.  
Everyone was happy with that idea.

Later in the day, Aunt Kendra, Aunt Katie, and cousin Haley came over to celebrate with us.  We played hide and seek, had an early Easter egg hunt, and just had a plain old good time together.

Let the gift opening begin!!!  Marisa got a Hello Kitty art set, very cute.
She also got a big girl cup to drink out of (no sippy lid)...she loves it.

More gifts: her very first twirly skirt and a lovely Easter dress.  Such fun!  
Of course we had a fashion show and she tried them both on.

The kids got to make their own pizzas from Papa Murphy's.  

Thank you to Aunt Katie for taking all the photos! 
(I'm sorry we didn't get one with you in it...next time!)

The next day, we partied some more as it was Marisa's actual birthday.
She opened presents from us after breakfast.

I love the look of concentration on her little face as she tries to open this.
She got some books, clothes, and more play things for her little kitchen.

After lunch, we had more cupcakes...we've had a lot of cupcakes in the past three days!

Marisa is our precious, funny, industrious, creative, brilliant and spunky daughter!
We are so thankful to have her in our lives.  

Just some silliness...

Dog pile on Daddy!  This is how we celebrated Chinese New Year.
Oh yeah, we also had some yummy Chinese take out.  :)

Swimwear, not just for summer time.  Honestly, it was a compromise.

Love these little feet!  One of the few times when they weren't
in motion.  This kid has a future in the Olympics!!

Camping indoors...our sweeties are so imaginative.  Love them!!

Everywhere he goes, Kieran is usually running!

Kieran's photography here...not bad!  Marisa is almost 2.  We planned
to go celebrate a day early, but when we got to the jumping place, it
had gone out of business!  We ended up eating samples at Costco instead.

More pics by Kieran...I think this is a really good picture of Mike.
We all had a rare moment of being ready to go with lots of time to spare.
Sad for us, we didn't know we were getting ready to go nowhere.
Thank goodness for Costco!!  (Even the park was closed today...weird!)

Guess they didn't get the memo to look at the CAMERA and SMILE.
I have no idea what they were looking at... :)

Next post...photos of Marisa's second birthday!  Eventually, we did have some celebratory activities.