Valentine's Day.

Valentine's Day was a good mix of traditions, a simple normal day and a few new traditions thrown in for some extra fun.

The morning started with a few self-portraits.  Carter likes to take pictures himself when he sees the camera sitting out.

 Not bad, at least he got both of us in the shot!

Then it was cookie time!  Yep, it was only 9am but I figured I'd give him sugar early so he'd have all day to burn it off. Every year we make heart shaped sugar cookies the night before Valentine's Day.  It started a few years ago when Matt was in a cookie contest at work.  We've used the winning recipe ever since!  Except this year we couldn't find the darn heart-shaped cookie cutter so we settled for some nice butterfly cookies instead. (I'll never understand why Carter smiles like that everytime....he thinks it's normal to scrunch up your nose as much as possible!)

Then we took the extra cookies over to our neighbors.  Carter was so excited!  Of course, they weren't home and he was determined to sit and wait on the front porch all day until they returned.  Thank goodness I convinced him a surprise Valentine would be much more exciting.

Matt's mom loves to buy the kids holiday shirts each year.  I really wanted to get a picture of both kids together in their new outfits.  I just love Lucy's little heart shirt.  This was the best I could get.  

 Carter was so sweet and gentle with Lucy and really just wanted to give her a hug.  She wanted nothing to do with it.

 They look thrilled.

 Finally, Carter got his reward for all that picture taking.  Pink milk!

And we ended the night with our traditional homemade pizza.  Usually we use fresh dough and fancy toppings but this year we went cheap.  It was still delicious and made for a perfect end to a lovely day.