Happy Valentine's Day

I survived getting another year older and enjoying the benefits of the gifts to help assuage the pain of aging! I LOVE my deeper sinks where there is little chance of the constant streams of water going down the counter top from over zealous helpers and I LOVE having a chaise lounge (what a fantastic word!) for lounging and enjoying my new deck. Now I just need my next door neighbors to improve my view from my deck. They planted a fig tree and I hope that we can soon sit on the deck and reach over for some delicious fruit!

We are eagerly awaiting the arrival of Lisa, Gillian, and Darcey. Annabel woke up very early just in case she misunderstood when they were going to arrive. She woke up Grace who then came in to wake me up to tell me that Annabel woke her up. Thanks!

Annabel has continued to make such huge progress in learning English that she is now able to find songs in English she likes to sing. The only trouble is she truly takes after her mother and cannot get the words right, who was sure the ever famous War song, "Why can't we be friends" actually said, "I get real depressed" and argued vehemently with her older sister on her accuracy.

So as I have mentioned before, Hannah Montana's song, "The Best of Both Worlds" has been for a long time, "It's basketbaaaaaaaallllllllll", which is just as good I guess.

But now she wants to learn more of the words, so I looked up the lyrics so we both could learn them.

So now the line is, "You get the limo out front. Hottest styles, every shoe, every color." In between is a lot of oowa, oowa, yea, yea.

I explained what a limo is and what the phrase the limo out front would mean, what are the hottest styles, and the concept of every shoe, every color.

Then she belts out, "You get the lemon out front. Shoes, every color."

I corrected her to limo, yea, she knows, lemon, no, limo, yea, lemon, no limo, yea lemon. You can see it is a lost cause!

We haven't even tried to learn the next line.

Valentine's is one more of those holidays that we celebrate that is very difficult to explain. I realize it is disdained as a greeting card industry holiday, but the sentiments behind it are sweet - showing your love to others.

But when you are in 5th grade and seem to have a crush on a boy in your class, then Valentines' becomes "eeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwww".

We were at our local Chinese Buffet at 7:07 pm on Thursday night when I casually asked if they were sure they did not need valentine cards.

Oh yes they did!!!

A quick trip to Tom Thumb provided a new product where the candy and valentines are in one package and thankfully we had a couple of choices that would not make them feel geeky by providing something too childish. Annabel didn't want to be bothered with writing out cards so she chose a bag of suckers.

This child who probably had very little candy in China has definitely developed a taste for it here.

So her bag of 24 suckers came back with almost half of them left so she could have them.

If I had just given her a tub of butter and a loaf of bread she would have been even happier, all things that she deplored when she first arrived.

We continue to learn!