Spoil Katie Week

Valentines and my birthday happen to fall in the same week, so I get spoiled every year from the 14th to the 20th of February. 

The Valentine's Day flowers that Cody sent to me at work. I work at a K-12 school and I was in the lunchroom with the Kindergarten and 1st grade students when they brought in the flowers. All of the students wanted to know who they were from and why I got them. It reminded me of when I was in 1st or 2nd grade and my mom came in to do reading groups with my class. On Valentines my dad paid a quartet of singers to come to my school and serenade my mom. I was the most popular student in school that day because everyone heard about the singers and my mom :)

 Some of the valentines that I got from the kids in the 1st grade. They don't celebrate Valentines Day, so a lot of them drew pictures that day and passed them out.

The strawberry cookie heart that I made for Valentines Day. It is a sugar cookie base with cream cheese and almond frosting with strawberries on top. Yummy!

My birthday celebration began on Sunday, Feb. 19 with my family via skype. My favorite game to play with my family before we moved to MN was Ticket to Ride. The game consists of a board that is a map of the US with several destinations labeled on the map. The object of the game is to build trains to connect destinations. I have been wanting to play this game lately and we figured out how to play it via skype. We positioned our skype cameras on our individual boards and made sure to place trains from each end on our own boards. Kinda confusing, but it worked out great! We then lit my birthday cake in MN and my mom and Ryan lit their pie in UT and I blew out the candles :)

My delicious birthday cake. A white cake with almond frosting. Can you tell that I like almond flavoring?

My birthday breakfast- eggs benedict made by my wonderful husband Cody

I spend the rest of my birthday relaxing and painting these St. Patrick's day crafts. It was a great, stress free birthday!

Valentines

Valentines has exploded at our house! 

These are hearts made out of melted crayons and they glow when the light shines in through our window. 

Decorations my mom and I bought last year when we were still in Utah. 

When we were in Utah for Christmas I told my mom that we needed to go to the wood connection and get some crafts for me. I had just endured a month of Cody doing homework until 10 at night and was desperate for something to do. These hearts are one of the many projects we picked up, more to come soon!

This was definitely the most ambitions Valentine's project. I won't say that it was worth the time, but I am pleased with the way my tissue paper heart turned out :)

Swords, Sushi, and Symphony

Cody's dad bought a sword at a garage sale 20 years ago. This sword has since been passed down to Cody (against his fathers will, with the explicit instructions not to sell it). So when we saw that Treasure Hunters was coming to St. Paul we knew exactly what we were going to take in. We ended up in the lobby of a Best Western lined with hillbillies. We noticed that among the group they probably has a grand total of 33 teeth. We made our way to the front of the line and found out that our treasure was an 1880s French bayonet used by the communists to fight the government. The appraisal value was.....

$50.

So we promptly sold it to fund Cody's education. 

J/K that wouldn't even make a dent ;)

Next on our list of Saturday festivities was to join our friends Vanessa and Michael for a date night. Michael and Cody go to school together and they both planned our night out on the town. We began with sushi at Sakura.

After a delicious dinner of sushi and tempura, we ventured across Rice Park in the freezing cold (-10 with wind chill) to the Ordway Theater.

The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra played pieces by Upsahw, Dennehy, and Beethoven. The piece by Dennehy was the world premire, but I wasn't too thrilled about it. I enjoyed Beethoven the most, probably because it was the most familiar. 

All in all it was a successful Saturday full of swords, sushi, and symphony.

Minnehaha Falls

It isn't every day that you get to see a frozen waterfall. 

Apparently there is a yummy seafood restaurant right by the falls that is only open in the summer. Hopefully we'll have time to come back again this summer!

Winter Carnival

It's cold outside and there is snow on the ground, what should we do? We should have a carnival of course! 

Cody and I attended the Winter Carnival in St. Paul this past week. It was quite the extravaganza with lots of activities. Our first stop was to see the carved ice sculptures in Rice Park. 

Totem Pole

Lion

A Bowling Polar Bear- instead of pins, there are penguins that he is trying to knock over

'Das Wintermakingmachine'

My personal favorite- the throne

Does this remind anyone else of the Princes dance with Neil and Danny from So You Think You Can Dance?

I do have a soft spot for Neil :)

Our next stop was the Saintly City Cat Show which may sound silly but was pretty fun. This was basically a dog show where owners bring their dogs and judges give awards to the best, but for cats. 

Cody's favorite part was when one of the cats got angry while the judge was holding it. It started hissing and the owner had to come take it away.