what i'm getting for valentine's day

This week has been a little crazier than usual. I spent the majority of the week feeling slightly claustrophobic due to plastic covering all of the doors and windows. The painters have completed the house and now just have to finish painting the fence and pool area, and then stain our front door and garage doors. Picking colors was a tad stressful (our HOA provided 15 choices), but I really feel good about our choice. The base color is a bit darker (Mesa Tan) than before and our accents (which had faded so much we didn't know we had an accent color) are now a brick red color (Red Hook). I think the colors make it a little more bold/interesting, yet still fit the southwestern design of the home. Here is a shot I took this afternoon. I'll take a another photo after the doors are finished (will be a darker stain).

Did you notice that blue sky? The weather has been gorgeous this week. Cool enough for long sleeves/sweatshirt in the shade and then nice and warm in the sun (into the 70s). Love it.

Liv is now 21 months. That is seeming awfully close to two; I guess it's just around the corner, really.

She is funny, often clingy, and yet getting more and more independent at the same time.

She climbed up on the counter and helped herself to this cantaloupe:

I took just the older boys to the Blue and Gold banquet this week. They had all sorts of balloon things and magic tricks and other things that my boys loved. Here is a silly shot of Hewitt with some of the treasures:

Hewitt is the "Star of the Week" this week and he helped me put together and decorate his poster on Friday. I had printed several photos of him and it was interesting to me how particular he was about which pictures he wanted to use and how he wanted everything arranged. He is so laid back sometimes, yet such a perfectionist about other things. He always keeps me guessing.

Burke finished reading the Harry Potter series last weekend and started reading it again and is already in book four again. Book four! He tries to read about every minute he can: in the car, while he is eating (if we let him), etc. I caught this shot of him just after we got home from church today as he was eating some cereal:

A couple of cute ones of Tosh taken today:

Liv actually kept a little clip in her hair for all of church today. I got these cute pink shoes as a baby shower gift from my friend Amy, and I couldn't believe it when she fit into them today:

Of course after church the shoes and flower clip were gone and she was able to run around like a free woman:

She spends most of her time playing with balls, cars and Legos...I love it!

(I think that red accent looks good with the red tile on our back porch...)

Other things from the week: Rob and I chaperoned a youth, girl's choice Valentine dance last night. The turnout wasn't great (100 kids) and the kids were slow to get dancing so we got out there to kick things off. I've mentioned before that you could call Rob a somewhat loud dancer, well, the kids (and other chaperones) got such a kick out of him. It was hilarious to me that a lot of the kids would follow whatever Rob was doing on the dance floor, like pretending to jump rope, the macarena (to a random song-not the macarena song), the moonwalk, and whatever else he was doing at the time. I probably got close to a dozen comments about him. What can I say? He loves to get his groove on.

Our kitchen faucet completely busted on Wednesday. I pulled it out to use it as a hose to fill up my mop bucket that morning, and the next time I tried to use it, it literally sprayed water everywhere like a fountain. I was able to turn it off, but by that evening it was so messed up that we couldn't get the water to stop spraying without turning off the water from down below (it was spraying Tosh and his food at the bar and he was crying and screaming, poor kid). Even our handyman couldn't fix it and we are hoping that a replacement will be in the mail tomorrow. It has been such a pain not being able to use the kitchen sink for the last five days! All I want for Valentine's Day is a working kitchen sink. And new exterior paint, of course.