Valentine's Day 2010

Our Valentine's day this year started off with a nice quiet morning.  I had to work, and it was about 7 AM when I got home.  James was up, which was unusual.  He's usually still asleep when I got home after working on Sundays.  I had picked up breakfast at McDonald's on my home, so we had breakfast and snuggled up on the couch to watch Crocodile Dundee.  That's right - nothing much romantic about that, but it was funny.  It just happened to be TV.  We watched it until it was time to get dressed for church.  For lunch we went to a small Italian restaurant near our house.  It was good.  We exchanged gifts when we got back home. 

James gave me this oddly shaped package, that he wrapped himself.  He said he couldn't find a box that it would fit in, so he just wrapped it up without one.  He asked me what I thought it was before I opened it.  I told him that I thought it was an elephant.  And I was right!

The dogs had to check it out.  It is a wooden hand carved elephant.  We saw it while we were shopping together in Branson just before Christmas.  I admired it, but didn't buy it.  James went back to that store without me knowing and bought it!  You may be wondering why I wanted it in the first place.  Well, we are finally getting around to decorating our basement.  We hope to use it as a playroom for our kids, and we thought a safari theme would be fun.  The elephant will be part of the decor in the basement.

I gave a cookbook called The Soul of a New Cuisine: a Discovery of the Foods and Flavors of Africa
The author was born in Ethiopia and raised in Sweden.  He is currently a chef in NYC.  We were looking forward to trying some of these recipes.

Hope you all had a lovely Valentine's Day!