Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day!

The holiday snuck up on me, but my old sweetie-pie was ready, and so was Katie (the Minion card is from her, of course!). And he remembered chocolates for our progeny. I don't deserve such a sweet, thoughtful honeybunch, but I sure am glad to have him! (And I shared the M&M's with him, and the rum. Mix 3/4 cup milk, heated nice and hot, with a shot or so of rum. Add sugar and cocoa powder to taste. Top with mini-marshmallows. Begin to think that you may, if kept supplied with this nectar of the gods, survive the winter after all.)

Cards, candy, booze, and this darling man across the table from me at breakfast! How lucky am I?

In other news....
it's still winter. I've been walking Finn most days, but otherwise try to stay inside. Just so ding dang cold you would hardly believe!

Good weather for reading, though. The kids and I are reading Great Expectations for school, and I'm reading David Copperfield aloud, to them. And I'm reading Marilynne Robinson's On the Givenness of Things, which is excellent but dense. I read Gilead for a library book group and loved it, and I'm trying to branch out a bit and read a little more modern fiction. On Saturday Katie and I went with my parents to another book discussion group, this one is the Mystery Book Group (Gilead was for the Pulitzer group, but their next book is Faulkner's A  Fable, which doesn't appeal to me). The book we were discussing was The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, which really is good, and which offers lots of interesting angles for exploration, but no one else showed up except for the very nice young woman who organizes all the library's book groups (I think she is finding attendance an issue in all her groups, poor thing). Still, we enjoyed the bush tea she brought (and I made cookies), and my dad led the talk and it was fun.

Today our family hosted coffee hour at church, so I spent Saturday afternoon busily baking and chopping. I made a chocolate Kahlua cake which Really looked good to me. Kahlua in the cake, and more in the delicious (I tried it) sticky icing. I am told it really was good. Also chocolate chip cookies with pink icing and Valentine's sprinkles, oreos (I did nothing to these), carrots and celery with California dip, and a first class layered nacho dip. That was said to be excellent as well. It wasn't all "wins." I printed out the wrong reading for Travis, but, fortunately, he caught my mistake and read from the bulletin (It wasn't completely my fault, since the secretary mixed up the order of the readings in last week's bulletin. But I should have been suspicious when I saw a Psalm for the Gospel reading.). And I got into church late, what with last minute icing and applying of sprinkles, and I had to take a front row pew (because that's where Katie had put my coat and where Ed sat) and then I couldn't find the right hymn (because I was in the wrong pew and that Utterly disorients me) and there I was, in front of God and Everyone, gesturing my confusion to the people behind me. They kindly got me to the right spot, but I felt like a dingbat. And then the pianist and the priest, both subs, scrambled things, but that's par for the course at this point, and not my fault. At least I don't think it was, though, since I was in the front maybe it was. Anyway, you can see why I was so pleased that the food part went well!

And tonight it's snowing. But not, I think, a lot. And it will probably mean I won't have to leave the house tomorrow, so... yay!

Emma takes Bananagrams seriously!