Valentine's Day + +

Okay, I am only a week (and a little bit) late with this post... but better late than never, right? Since there can be a lot of "pressure" around Valentine's Day, Jaime and I have a tradition of trading years so that each one of us is in "charge" every other year. With everything that has been going on the past few years, we have lost track of who's turn it is so Jaime took this year.

The day started out as usual with breakfast and a little playing around the house. Then we got everyone ready and headed out.

Our first stop was at our small neighborhood market for some "picnic" foods: fresh baguettes, meats, cheese, chips, and drinks.

Next we went to a nice field of yellow flowers for a few pictures... there is a bit of history on this which started when Jaime and I lived in Portugal. On our Valentine's Day there, we happened upon a great field of yellow flowers and took some pretty pictures together. Then, when we lived in California, Jaime saw a similar field of yellow flowers and made it a part of that year's Valentine's Day as well. So, when he saw yet another field of yellow flowers here in Tenerife, he knew we had to go... making the yellow flower pictures sort of a tradition. Of course, we've added two more little faces to the pictures and the tradition. Unfortunately we weren't able to get all of us in the same shot but I think we got some cute ones anyhow.

After our photo shoot, we made our way to Puerto de la Cruz and to Loro Parque. We visited the park back in October and had such a nice time we bought season passes so that we could visit again and again. It's a smaller cozier version of Sea World and this time it almost felt as if we had the park to ourselves. There weren't any crowds, we wandered around leisurely, enjoyed our picnic, saw a few shows, and let the boys explore. I think we all liked the park even better this time. It was also really neat to see the difference in the boys awareness, curiosity, and enjoyment of everything from last time when they were just over 13 months and this time now that they are almost 18 months. They pointed at, babbled with, and watched with interest the animals, the shows and the people. Alex even sat and watched almost the entire Sea Lion performance swaying to the music and clapping with the audience while Connor tried to figure out how he could get closer to the action. Too cute!!

As we drove home, Puerto de la Cruz left us with this beautiful farewell. What a nice way to end our fun but tiring day.

"Do things to make your day precious." -Bernie Siegel