Happy Valentine's Day

3 must be the magic year for holidays. Lily loved Christmas and has loved the lead-up to Valentine's Day too. She got all fancied up in her Valentine clothes and let me take some pictures. Some of them glaringly point out some of my recent obsessions, but let's start with one of hers...

Lily's favorite - books! She would "read" or get read to all day long if she had her chance. She would likely choose books as favorites over any other possession. We have a basket in the living room that holds a rotating selection of books and is usually filled with books related to the current holiday or season. Her favorite of the Valentine books surprised me. It was a little collection of poems called, "It's Valentine's Day" by Jack Prelutsky. Here's her favorite:

I Love You More Than Applesauce

I love you more than applesauce,

than peaches and a plum,

than chocolate hearts and cherry tarts

and berry bubblegum.

I love you more than lemonade

and seven-layer cakes,

than lollipops and candy drops

and thick vanilla shakes.

I love you more than marzipan,

than marmalade on toast,

oh I love pies of any size,

but I love YOU the most.

Lily loves this poem and has adapted it several times to tell people around her how much she loves them. Some of my favorites:

"I love you more than chocolate!"

"I love you more than ice cream!"

"I love you more than Reese's Peanut Butter Cups shaped like a heart!"

(now that's love!)

I normally try not to do the - "Sit, look at the camera and smile!" pictures, but I had to highlight one of my latest obessions - the holiday banners. My friend Cassadie may regret showing me how to make a birthday banner out of colorful fabric, because I got obsessed and now routinely drag Cassadie off to the fabric store with me to pick out the latest holiday fabrics for my newest banner. (Who am I kidding, do Cassadie and I really need that as an excuse to hit the fabric store?) Anyway, I wanted to somehow incorporate the Valentine banner into the pictures, hence the posed pictures above...

One of my other obsessions - taking pictures of Lily on the swings. You may have noticed I take several. There's just something about pictures of her on the swing. They're not posed for one thing and she has such a genuine smile when she's swinging - I love it!

See what I mean:

One last obsession - the beach! And specifically, pictures of Lily on the beach! We recently went to the beach for a "just-the-three-of-us" family vacation and took lots of pictures. Most of those are for another post, but I just had to share one that was particularly Valentiney!

Happy Valentine's Day everyone. We love you more than chocolate hearts!