Love Lifts Us Up Where We Belong

These pictures are all backwards so I guess I'll tell you about Valentine's Day in reverse!

I certainly LOVE this sweet baby. And holding her while she sleeps in pretty much my favorite thing. But it's time for her to sleep in her own bed and get on a better schedule. It's been a gradual process but we are doing great. Whether this girl has a 10 minute nap or 2 hours, she is still always so sweet.

We are blessed to live in California and had some beautiful, warm days recently! We love to go to the spa at our clubhouse. We usually drive but a few times we took the trail and walked. It's fun to meet friends there and nothing beats the sun shine!

Rayleigh being adorable

Tanner is still working in Visalia but we try our best to make the weekends memorable. Valentine's Day was on a Friday so we celebrated on Saturday. We ended the day with an amazing sunset. We tried to do some exploring and visited a couple of new parks. This was the hill behind 12 Bridges Elementary School. I'd heard there was a tree house up there and some rope swings. We didn't find any of that  but we DID enjoy a breathtaking view and had fun pretending we were in Ireland. It was so green and lush- it totally reminded me of what Ireland would look like! Tanner brought his GoPro and took some extraordinary pictures.

Before we headed to the hill we found these cement slides. Someone told me about them and we wanted to check it out! The park was so pretty and green with a little stream through the woods but the cement slides left much to be desired. They were incredibly slow! ha ha

For dinner, we went to Claim Jumper. Yum. That place is my favorite!

In the afternoon we had to take Rayleigh in for her 4 month appointment. (A few days late) She is healthy as can be. The doctor was so proud of her. :-) She is totally average for height and weight- not like Parker was! She's 14 pounds and 25 inches tall.  She literally is perfect. She had to get a shot though which completely broke my heart. I cried longer than she did. She was fine, not mama. Makes me so sad!

We decided to go to Cheesecake Factory for lunch to celebrate love day. We LOVE the Cheesecake Factory! And since our food took longer than expected they gave us each a free slice! Yum!!!

Our sweet Parker took this picture of us!

Speaking of love, did I mention how much I love her?

One night she completely took over Tanner's side of the bed. She did not want to be away from me. So darling. This was her the next morning.

And this was her the night before- taking over Tanner's side of the bed. :-)

She loves her bath!!!!

Parker and I spent a good 3 hours making Valentines for his class one day. We made home made pink heart shaped chocolates and cute tags to attach to the goodie bags. It took forever but was totally worth it! Valentine's Day at school is one of my favorite memories!

Our good friends in the neighborhood invited us over for a little Valentine's Day dinner one night. Amy made heart shaped pizza for the kids! It's so nice having such wonderful friends and neighbors here, especially since Tanner has been gone. We sure are lucky! Parker and Ella are both in Kindergarten and Ella is an amazing gymnast!

These kids are the best! That Jarom is just about the coolest kid. He is one of a kind and super awesome. He loves Rayleigh and totally makes her laugh.

Whelp, that pretty much wraps up Valentine's Day in reverse! It was a great one! I got Tanner a romantic card and he didn't get me anything.... so he mailed me one later on in the week. That totally redeemed him. It's the thought that counts! :-)