the clawsons

We love Valentine's Day here at our home! It's definitely a close runner up to Christmas. I grew up with a Mother who loved making every holiday special, even the small ones. My mom would always decorate the house and make yummy treats. She would always have a special surprise waiting for us at the breakfast table too. I'm trying to carry on that tradition. Arli is finally getting old enough to get excited about anything and everything, she loved helping me decorate and LOVED helping me make sugar cookies. We had SO much fun with the cookie cutting, that I decided it would probably be best if I frosted the cookies:)

Arli was very focused on cutting out hearts that is until she realized how fun playing in flour is!

When she woke up from her nap and the cookie decorating was done, I thought I should let up a little on the no sugar thing and let her taste her creation. She really enjoyed herself!

Marcus' friend and boss Stuart, let Marcus borrow some of his camera lenses and other cool gear over the weekend. Marcus had a fun time playing with new techniques while Arli graciously modeled for him. I'm so glad Marcus has taken an interest in learning more about photography. I love having a variety of artistic pictures of Arlington but I'm not a very artistic person when it comes to photography. I'm much more of a point and shoot type of person. Here are a few of my favorites:

I know that we've had several inches of snow already, but last Saturday was the first time Arli actually got to play in some. She spent a whole 15 minutes helping Marcus build a snowman.
Arli starting out helping her dad but when that got boring she moved on to this:
Then she thought she should at least pretend like she's helping.

At last, the completed snowman!

We had such a great Christmas this year. It was pretty low key, we spent Christmas Eve at Marcus' parents house and Christmas day with my family. Arlington is finally beginning to understand the present thing, she still had a hard time unwrapping all of her gifts first THEN playing with them. She loved her play kitchen and hasn't stopped playing with it since! Arli received so many domestic gifts this year. Before we had Arlington I was going to make sure that I didn't buy too many "girly" toys for her. I wanted to make sure she still played with plenty of "boy" toys . I've realized that she likes some "boy" things but REALLY loves all things "girl". Oh well I tried, hopefully next year I can encourage her to play with trains, or trucks or guns( just kidding)!