Valentine's

I got Athen all dressed up in his Valentine's outfit. I bought this cute red and white striped outfit in 2000 for a friend of mine who had a baby. However, I never got around to sending it to her before her kid grew out of it. It says be mine 2000 on it so I couldn't really give it to someone else over the years so I kept it for myself. Lucky for me it fit my little one on Valentine's Day. Notice his cute shoes. My friend A made them for him for Valentine's Day, aren't they adorable?  

We started our Valentine's off with a play group on Friday morning at the church. There were about 12 or 13 kids there, half under the age of one and the other half up to two or three. The mom's with the younger babies stayed on one side of the room while the bigger kids played on the other. It was a pot luck so we ate lots, had fun visiting and then the kids passed out Valentine's. Athen's first Valentine's.

On Saturday, we spent the day shopping at the mall. It was our first time shopping together as a family. Rick and I use to go to the mall a lot together but we haven't been with Athen yet. I got a Valentine's Day skirt and Rick got a new work shirt. 

On Sunday, my sweet romantic husband made me a very special dinner - my very favorite thing in the world, rissoto. Rick knows how to make the best rissoto ever. It is so rich and full of umami, it is to die for. We also had some delicious chicken and french beans. The table was set nice with my new black & white place mats and red napkins, with my white plates and red wine glasses. We even had red and white candles burning. He was dressed up nice and served me dinner. I felt like I was at a fancy restaurant. We had a wonderful day together!

Monday was a holiday so we got to spend the day together as a family. The weather was nice so we headed down to Santa Cruz one of our favorite places to show Athen around and spend the day. We headed straight to Samba Cafe for an Acai bowl. I have been waiting for a long time to eat one, I wasn't able to eat them when I was pregnant because of the caffeine. It was delicious, it had strawberries, bananas, large slivers of coconut, granola and aci. We then went to Steamer's Lane to check out the surf. The waves were huge, bigger than I have ever seen them there. No wonder Maverick's was this week, the ocean was wild. We got a good parking spot so decided to pull out the Bob and stroller around for a while. 

It was high tide. If you can believe all the white water in this picture is actually covering up all the sand on a beach that we go to. I can't believe the water covered the whole beach.

We decided to head to Capitola for some lunch. We had my favorite - Togo's on the beach. Again, I had been waiting a long time for that as well. I couldn't eat Togo's while pregnant. Togo's on the beach is one of my favorite things in the world! 

Rick headed out in to the surf for a little while while Athen and I played on the beach. We set up Athen's new little peapod tent which I love!! My friend Elise just sent it to us and it was the perfect gift for us. It will get used ALL the time (thanks Elise). We didn't get any pictures of Athen in it but he loved it. He just laid in that tent and kicked his legs smiling and enjoying the fresh air.

We then headed over to visit our friends Justin & Silvia for a little while. Silvia is from Brazil and wanted to get Acai bowls so we headed back to Samba Cafe and had another Acai bowl. Can't get better than that - 2 Acai bowls in one day. This time we had one with bananas, papaya, pineapple, mangoes, granola and acai, again very delicious. 

We then headed home around 4:00. It was a perfect day in Santa Cruz. We are so glad our little one loved it as much as we did. 

My twin sister gave me some of her old baby stuff before Athen was born. One of the things she gave me was her Bumbo seat. However, since her youngest Georgia is a girl the seat is pink. We took it anyway and decided to see if Athen would fit. I think he may be a little small for it but he looked pretty cute in it. I think it's perfect for him because it proped up his head so he was looking up at the ceiling which is one of his favorite things to do any way.