Valentine's Day

On the way to work on Monday morning, running late, I realized it was too late to stop for doughnuts, and I hadn't even made heart shaped sandwiches. Instead, the kids would be buying their lunches. "Can we go out for dinner tonight?" Leila asked, eager to celebrate.
"No, we're having leftover beans and rice," I told her.
She wasn't disappointed much, however, and quickly began making plans to make dinner special. "You cook the food and I'll do everything else," she told me. I wasn't sure what she meant, but she explained she would set the table and make a menu and the like.
On the way home from piano lessons we stopped at Whole Foods and got a sweet treat to make our meal special. Leila put a candle on the table and wrote out a menu with our choices:
DinnerRice and beans
Desertchoclate cupcakes
Drink
cupwater
She decorated it with smiley face hearts and a "happy V Day!" across the bottom.
I really appreciate Leila's cheerfulness and her ability to roll with the punches. When it's something she considers fun, she really gets into helping, as well. On Saturday I told her to practice the piano and do some homework before calling a friend, and later she would have to clean up her things. She opted to do the cleaning first, and set to work energetically tidying up. Ali, who hates cleaning up usually, complained that Leila had done the clean up that he was supposed to do!
On Tuesday morning I asked Leila to make sandwiches for her and Ali's lunch. I was going to have leftover rice and beans, but when I came out of the bedroom ready to go, my lunch was waiting for me: (turkey) bologna sandwich, Sun Chips (my favorite- as Leila reminded me), and a chocolate cupcake. While the sandwich was rather dry, the liberal spreading of love Leila had given it made it the best lunch of my week.