Well, I did not catch up on Valentangle2019 this week. With Valentine’s Day approaching, I was busy planning that, my kids came for the weekend, and my nieces are coming today. Busy but fun times. So it is my plan to work on the rest of the Valentangle2019 prompts throughout the rest of the month. There’s no law against it.

We celebrated Lauren’s birthday last weekend. Since her birthday is so close to Christmas, it was hard for her to come up with a wish list, so she just asked for cash to spend as she sees things and for spending on their vacation this spring.

We gals generally put cash on or in something little. I got her some pretty glitter washi tape . . . I know, shocking . . . she really liked the chevron one in the small package. Tracie put hers on the back of a print that Lauren really liked and Mom put hers between the pages of a notepad–we all did good. Then poor Sean is the lone male that gives gifts himself (I know he’ll be glad when he has a wife to help with these things ). He leans towards money origami. In the picture above Lauren is holding the hearts he made with the money.

Liam is such a ham! Well many children are these days with all the pictures taken with phones but also he goes to a daycare where they send pictures to the parents daily and have taught him to smile and say cheese. It’s adorable.

It’s funny because he had been over there playing with that activity center on the sofa by Lauren when I took the first picture. Then he came towards me, smiling and saying cheese the whole time. He kept it up, doing different things but keeping eye contact with the camera for a good few minutes. However my poor picture taking skills did not do any of this justice. Even the picture above had to be edited because the flash made it sooooo bright. Hey, at least I’m getting the camera out to try and take some pictures.

Here’s an example of my poor camera skills (raw, unedited in any way):

On each person’s birthday, I let them choose their food. Lauren chose No-Bake Strawberry Cheesecake (THM) version,

and open-face sausage sandwich-low carb version – (and tater tots).

I added cooked mushrooms, onions, and peppers to mine and we had veggie tots which are not really compliant because they have the wheat breading but I was doing so much cooking that I did not feel like making something different for us . . . in hindsight, I should have just made the green fries.

For breakfast the next morning we had Cinnamon Pecan Baked Pancakes  (Trim Healthy Table pg 338), bacon, and eggs for those that wanted them. Once Liam finished eating, he made his way to sit on Uncle Sean’s lap.

I love it when I see similarities in them.

At one point the kids were getting ready to play a video game together. Lauren snapped this shot of Liam getting right into it too (at least sitting with them and holding some kind of controller–this controller thing doesn’t always work, as sometimes he realizes his is different and wants the real thing).

It was a good weekend, especially because I hadn’t seen them since Christmas and I’d only seen my sister and her family at the hospital when Mom had her knee surgery. We used to get together every Sunday! It’s a bit difficult adjusting to seeing the rest of them so infrequently. (Then there is my other sister and her family in Missouri that we see even more infrequent!) Life goes on and changes as it does. In five and ten years, things will look even more different . . . I hope it will include more extended family time than we’ve been having the last year or two. Well, only God knows.

Earlier this week Tiffany and I decided to go to our local (used in a very broad sense) library. Okay, it is as far away as the Tulsa library we were frequenting and in the opposite direction, but it is the one that we pay taxes towards and therefore free to us. We decided NOT to pay the $50 to borrow from the Tulsa library system.

I’d taken a picture from a different angle using a different app and forgot to save it. Ugh!!! See! My photography skills are severely lacking. So this one is courtesy of Tiffany.

Sean went with us too, since he was working at home that day. We took our laptops and even did some writing after looking around. It really is a lovely building. Maybe next month I’ll take my camera and get some nice pics to share.

I’ll run for now. Have a great weekend; I intend to.

Until next tie, God bless,

Michele ºÜº