Happy Valentine's Day!
Our usual tradition is to make and decorate sugar cookies with friends. However, our current regular homeschool playdate friends have crazy food allergies. It just wasn't worth risking their lives! Instead we did a last minute half batch that Lion and Bug decorated and delivered to a few neighborhood friends--keeping a few for ourselves, of course. Yum!

Great Aloha Run
Lion and Daddy ran her first big race--both in distance (8.2mi, farther than she's ever run before) and in participation (11,482 runners/walkers). She LOVED it--the endless stream of people to pass, the high school bands playing along the route, the soldiers and sailors calling cadence, and especially winning her age group of 101 five-to-nine-year-old females by about 8 minutes (she was also 961st overall, and 188th female)! And this with Daddy slowing her down, so she wouldn't burn out. The route passed a block from our house, so Monkey, Bug and I went out to wave as she and Daddy passed by. She looked like one happy camper! Bug commented, "It's like a parade!...A really sweaty parade."

Belt Test!
Our taekwondo school finally had another belt test. The girls were hoping they'd be allowed to skip a belt, since they worked really hard and actually know the form for the next belt up already (really their goal was to break out of the rambunctious crowd they've been stuck with). No such luck. They all passed the test with flying colors, of course, and will be awarded their purple belts.

Silver Lining
Daddy had to travel for several weeks recently. Much as we missed him, we took advantage of his absence by enjoying things like food he doesn't like (asparagus, onigiri, and afternoon tea for dinner, etc.), or simply in locations he doesn't like (PB&J with friends at the beach) and movies he won't watch (ALL the princess movies!). Since he was gone, they also had an intermission in their evening literature with Daddy (currently Call of the Wild), and we read vast quantities of our current read aloud series (we're now in book 12 of the Series of Unfortunate Events). But now he's back! Hooray!