Treasuring the Present: My Three Valentines

This will be my best Valentine's day yet...

For the first time in my life, I have a HUSBAND as my Valentine -- and my two wonderful animals as Valentines too.

Today, I am treasuring the present of personalities of my adorable animals.

No matter the antics, how could I ever stay annoyed at this adorable, lovable little guy?

Lloyd is truly in a rebellious, adolescent stage.  He is like a middle-schooler who will be the perfect angel we've raised him to be one minute and a little rebel breaking all the rules and pushing our every button another minute.  I am trying to treasure this time because someday he will not be this rambunctious wild-one.

It's been way too long since I've photographed my beautiful girl

Of everyone in the house, she's been my Valentine the longest

Lexie is such a sweetheart.  She still does not like Lloyd, but she walks a fine line between wanting to be held and snuggled and pet and not wanting anything to do with the dog.  She slept in our bed a few nights last week, but the only place she felt comfortable enough to sleep in our bed was above/on-top-of my head.  The funny thing is, when I rolled over in the night and felt her hogging most of my pillow, I was SO excited that she was sleeping with us, that I didn't mind at all.

I am not very photogenic in my sleep...

I love our animals -- even Lexie and her quarter-life snobby attitude toward her little brother, and even Lloyd and his adolescent antics.

"I'm warning you"

"He's touching me!!!!"

Mostly, I love my hubby and I am so excited to celebrate my first Valentine's day as his wife.  I tried to get a jump on demonstrating my love in a cute way by baking him blueberry-banana muffins/cupcakes yesterday in heart-shaped muffin molds.  They didn't exactly come out of the container as easily or as beautifully as I had hoped.

In theory, these muffins looked so cute

In execution, there were more broken hearts than cut hearts

Praise God for a hubby who values the effort over the results

Today, I am treasuring the present where I am baking cute (or not-so-cute) treats for a hubby who appreciates my efforts.  There were past years where I would have been baking them for colleagues and I would have been too embarrassed to actually serve them... or there may be future years when I'm baking for children who are not so gentle in their opinion of my lousy baking attempts.

This is Lexie saying, "Please, Mom.  No human babies until I'm used to the dog!"

As I was writing this post (in bed, next to my hubby, Monday night), I just took a drink from my water bottle, and my hubby had headphones on, so he didn't know what the gurgling sound was.  He turned to look at me to see that I, in fact, had made the gurgling sound.  Something about his look made me giggle -- but I had water in my mouth, so I couldn't giggle.  To make matters worse, my nose was stuffed, so really the giggle had NO WAY OUT.  I ended up with sort of a giggle/laugh explosion inside my head until I could manage to swallow the water.  When I finally could laugh out loud, Chris and I were both laughing SO MUCH HARDER than the original giggle.  The situation had us both belly-laughing, and I had tears in my eyes.  These are the moments I treasure with my wonderful husband.

Happy Valentine's Day!

My Hubby Valentine!

For additional humor, I saw the below Valentine's card, and I had to laugh -- it is from a young child, and "unintentionally threatening"

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