Brisket, Valentines, Bikes, and Painting

Jared loves the Travel Channel show "Man vs. Food". On the show recently the guy at some Brisket and ever since then Jared has been dying to cook it. So we went on a quest to find some, and here is the result of our adventure.

Jared seasoned the meat like this:

Smoked it on low for 4 hours in the grill like this:

It turned out like this:

And we ate it like this:

For Valentines (and Young Womens) Xander helped me make Sugar Cookies. He had a blast!

We also decorated our window with construction paper hearts. (I love this picture because it shows the hearts, and how gorgeous it is outside. The snow was almost all melted, the sky blue. Ahhh, I am ready for spring)

And we had a red dinner, red meat, red potatoes, red corn, and red kool-aid.

Then our long awaited bikes arrived. Here is Jared putting his bike together:

Me with my bike:

And Xander in his red trailer (thanks to everyone's input, we did decide to go ahead and pick up a trailer, and we are sooo glad we did. HE LOVES IT!) It is his favorite color, Red (right now he tells me about ten times a day that his favorite colors are red, then blue).

Here we are on our maiden voyage to the park. They work beautifully, and our bums are officially sore (those bike seats are NOT comfortable).

Then yesterday, Xander was SUPER hyper, so we pulled out some paints to help focus his energy.

Here he is showing off the sheep he painted.

And here are the other ones we did (dinosaurs, trains, and turtles).

On a side note, spring is in the air here. It has been warming up. My tulip and daffodil bulbs are popping up. And today the snow OFFICIALLY was ALL melted in my yard. (There has been snow in the shadowy fence line). Hooray for Spring!