Valentine Festivities

We did a lot of neat things around Valentine's Day this year. 

Below is some True Love Bean Dip that I made for Feast & Fellowship at church. It's just seven layer bean dip with everything in slightly different order.

I hosted a Valentine's playgroup at our house. After we played in the basement for awhile, we let the kids use cookie cutters to make yummy watermellon hearts for snack. We also colored some Valentine pictures, including a picture of Jesus holding children on His lap, "Jesus loves the little children."

On Valentine's Day, I made a trail of rose petals down to the basement for Jeremy. I put a vase of flowers and a present next to Jeremy's weights and home gym. My gift to him was that I would actually lift weights with him since he always begs me to do that.

I also surprised him with a book that has all the posts and pictures from the first year of our blog (2008). He loved it. We also managed to go on a date. We ate lunch on Valentine's Day at the Four Daughter's Winery, which is a restaurant out in the country with a very hipster menu that is surprisingly delicious.

One of the best parts about Valentine's Day was that we got to witness Alainea's baptism!!

I kind of became the "baptism planner" for Leighsa since she has a lot going on with work and school full-time. Leighsa and Alainea told me what things they wanted, and I did my best to make it happen. Alainea was very involved in the planning, choosing the hymns and their specific order, calling friends to say prayers, singing a solo, and bearing her testimony that she typed up herself. She is a very special, pure little woman. I love her and her family so much!

Jeremy had the privilege of baptizing Alainea. Some people are now calling him Jeremy the Baptist because he has baptized our two newest church members.

We enjoyed lots of yummy Valentine's refreshments.

Here's Tanner in a cute shirt from GramZ. 

It snowed a lot around Valentine's Day. 

This bunny is investigating the cookie sheet that Jeremy threw outside when I burned the french bread in the oven. The burned bread pieces got buried under the snow.

Here are some random photos of the boys playing during February.

Trying to eat an orange before it's peeled.

Tanner sings "Let it go!" from Frozen at the top of his lungs while playing the guitar. He also adds new lyrics like "gotta follow Jesus and Heavenly Father!!!"

Silly little Dallin! One night, he was singing his own medley of songs, and shaking his head, making happy face, mad faces, drumming on the table, and making silly frowny faces to make us laugh. What a goof.

Here's a common sight in the neighborhood. This is the parking lot at Hormel. 

We went out to eat one night, so Tanner brought his backpack with some things to keep him busy. As soon as we got to the table, he pulled out his "activities" and laid them out on the table. He was very proud of having his own backpack and packing it all by himself.

Dance party!

Fun with cars.

We had a wonderful February!

Lark Toys and Eagle Center

On Sat February 7, we took a day trip to the Lark Toy Store and the National Eagle Center in Wabasha Minnesota, similar to our day trip about a year ago.

First, we ate a picnic lunch near the carousel. I brought homemade lasagna from the night before and it worked out perfectly! 

Then, we got on the merry-go-round. It was Dallin's first time. Tanner remembered being on the ride from last year! 

Every animal on this carousel was hand carved by the Lark Toy maker. Aren't they beautiful?

Dallin was a little squished sharing a seat with me. But once the ride finally started going, he was okay. Not many smiles from him during the ride, but he did say "wee, wee!" and watched wide-eyed.

Here are the exhibits of toys throughout the ages.

Puppet show

There are SO many toys to play with here! And there is a bookstore area, too.

The Eagle Center was beautiful. We got to see the ambassador eagles up close and watched an eagle presentation where we learned a lot. Clearly, there is a lot to learn about eagles; I learned so much even though we came here last year! So I'll include a few cool facts...

It is illegal to have any part of a bald eagle's body in your possession- even if you find a bald eagle feather or claw in the wild, you cannot keep it, unless you want to be a felon. Only Native Americans can own eagle feathers, and they must have a permit for the feathers, using them only for ceremonial things.

Bald eagles are very territorial. They make a terribly annoying screeching sound when they want you to leave their area. This is how we got warning that bald eagles were flying by outside--these ambassador eagles would see them through the windows and squawk at them.

They only weigh 8-10 pounds! Their bone marrow is different than ours, making them very light for good flight.

Below is a golden eagle. This animal is really good at hunting land animals and can even kill deer all by itself!

Eagles have extremely acidic stomach acid, similar to battery acid. It helps them digest their food because they don't chew it. They can even digest bones! Only the hair and fur of their prey comes back out of their mouth in the form of an eagle pellet.

Eagles can get led poisoning from bullet specks in deer and other animals they scavenge. Their stomach acid actually digests the led, getting into their blood stream and killing them. So if you hunt or fish, please use led-free bullets and equipment.

Tanner was really curious with lots of good questions. He takes after his mommy.

We saw four bald eagles flying in the wild along the Mississippi River by the eagle center. This winter is much warmer than last year (hard to believe), so many of the eagles haven't needed to migrate to this part of the river. That's why last year we saw a lot more eagles here. But it was still a really fun, educational trip. Here's the boys in front of a mural. 

We ate at the Silver Star restaurant. I had a peanut butter burger, YUM!

The boys were pretty well-behaved during dinner. They were actually well behaved the entire day. 

What a successful and fun day-trip with my adorable family!