Valentine's Day and the St. Valentine

This year Lilly went to her little friend Hayden's for a Valentine's Day Party. They decorated cupcakes and made Valentine mailboxes and then exchanged Valentines. It was very sweet. Brian got my favorite flowers (stargazers, tulips and orchids) and he gave us personalized M&Ms. Lilly chose her Dad's present herself - out of everything at the Gap, she chose boxers. Since multiple pairs of Brian's pants have been the victim of fountain pens in the dryer and oil in the washer, I got him lots of pants. I like to give practical gifts. On Valentine's Day, because every babysitter was booked, Lilly joined us at the club for dinner. Yet again, we had the only child at dinner, so we requested to sit away from the other diners and we had the whole pub to ourselves. It was the perfect way to spend the day with my two Valentines.

And just for fun, here is a picture that I took of St. Valentine. While visiting Michael in Rome in March 2007, I wanted to find the "Mouth of Truth" as seen in Roman Holiday, an Audrey Hepburn classic. (I very much enjoy doing all "touristy" things when I travel.) So I dragged Dana and Michael with me to look for the Mouth of Truth and we saw a big group of Japanese tourists. I've learned that Japanese tourists are like me and do everything there is to see/do in a touristy place so we followed them and of course, they were in line to take pictures with the "Mouth of Truth". It is located at the Church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin and like any good church/tourist hot spot/museum , you have to wind your way through the actual building and gift shop to get out. So after taking an obligatory photo with my hand in the mouth of the river god, (which is not pictured bc it's not on my camera but Dana's, so here's a photo of Dana w/her hand in the mouth) I meandered around the church and stumbled across a glass case containing the skull of St. Valentine!