Happy Valentine's Day!

Today's the day we have started a new tradition in our family!

When I was growing up we didn't have many traditions. My parents were always busy trying to provide for our basic needs. Rasing 3 kids in the times of Communism in the former Soviet Union wasn't a piece of cake. And when the time would come to celebrate, they did the best they could. But being a kid many times I felt that other kids had it better then us. Since I remember myself I always thought that when I get to have a family of my own I'd do many things differently. And so I'm trying...

I got this idea from the web and decided to "adopt" it into our family! As I love to bake, and Ivana plus now Leona are always eager to help, today we baked a giant heartshaped chocolate chip cookie. They were so cute! They took turns adding the ingredients and holding the hand mixer. Ivana wanted to lick the spoon after mixing the raw dough (didn't happen!) , but it took only a split second before my measuring spoon for pure vanilla extract ended up in Leona's mouth. Well, for a while her tiny sweet lips smelled like vanilla!

The job to form a heart out of the dough I took upon myself, even though they were both ready to help. I had to keep them busy with a couple of M&Ms that later we used to decorate our cookie. 20 minutes in the oven seemed like an eternity for them. Then another 20 min for the cookie to cool. And, finally, they were ready to decorate. I gave them the spatulas, the icing, full freedom ... and watched! Pure joy!

I wrote on the cookie "Happy Valentine's Day", and Ivana kept on spelling it while placing the pink, red and white M&Ms around it. Well... at that point Leona just immersed into the bag with M&Ms!

Chocolate lovers! Hey, there are 3 of us in the family now!

I'm sure next year we'll have fun baking it again!