Valentine's Day

I love Valentine's Day! Back when the kids were too young to even remember, we started having a special family Valentine's Day dinner every year. We have red Kool-Aid, heart shaped food, decorations, candles and a fun dessert. We even have special Valentine's dishes and placemats. Todd buys a Valentine's gift for Megan and me and I buy a gift for Todd and Andrew. We exchange cards and have a great evening together. The kids really look forward to it.

This year, I worked on Valentine's Day and we had plans the weekend afterwards, so I told the kids we might get up a little early one morning and have a Valentine's breakfast. That wasn't going to fly at all. They protested and we ended up having our dinner before our Monday night scout meetings.

In the past we've had heart shaped pasta with heart shaped garlic bread. we've had heart shaped meatloaf. One year we made heart shaped pizzas. We had breakfast for dinner one year with heartshaped pancakes. I've even made heart shaped homemade salad croutons before. We've had heart shaped hamburgers. We had fajitas one year with tortillas cut into hearts. One year, we had beans and cornbread with fried potatos that I painstakingly cut with cookie cutters into....yes, hearts. In the 10 or 11 years we've been doing this, so far I've never repeated a meal, but I can say I'm running out of ideas. This year we had grilled chicken, hashbrown casserole with a big cheesy heart on top, green beans, carrots, biscuits (no, I didn't cut them into hearts this time), macaroni and cheese, cherry Kool-Aid with heart shaped ice cubes and sugar cookies for dessert. It took me three hours to make the cookies from scratch and no two were decorated alike. I was so excited about them. The kids were home alone for about 45 minutes afterschool while Todd and I were running an errand, so I hid the cookies in a place they would NEVER look....the laundry room. Naturally, they found them. I can't get away with anything around here anymore!

We had a great dinner together. Megan received a Crystal Kelly jersey as her Valentine gift. Andrew got the Pirates of the Caribbean Scene It game. Todd gave me a gift certificate for a massage that I CANNOT WAIT to use. But, the thing that pleased me the most is that I gave Todd probably the coolest gift I've ever given him, and it was a complete and total surprise! I got him a plane ticket to Seattle to visit his buddy Jesse. I had already made arrangements with his boss for vacation time, and Jesse has already made arrangements to see the Mariners and the Tigers play. He has been wanting to go see Jesse, but we were waiting for a time I could go, too. It would probably be another year before that could happen, so in one of my most selfless wife acts ever (since I LOVE to travel and halve ALWAYS wanted to go to Seattle) I'm sending him. It made me so happy to be able to pull it off.

Hope you and your family had a great Valentine's Day, too!