I have always loved Valentine's Day. Even as a single gal, I'd buy myself a nice present, enjoy the roses my grandparents always sent me and had fun celebrating with friends. Flowers, candy, lots of pink - what's not to like?
Since Kevin entered the picture a few things have changed. For one, I've banned flowers. It's one thing when my grandparents dropped the cash on their only granddaughter, but no way am I allowing for the inflated Valentine's prices to come out of the family budget. Flowers for Anniversary. Oh yes. Flowers for a fun surprise? Sure. Flowers at Valentine's? Nope. That's my policy.
The other thing we do is eat this:
It's a shrimp pasta garnished with red apple slices and snap peas. We've had this exact pasta dish with these exact garnishes for about a dozen years in a row now. Seriously. Why the apples and peas? Because that's what the cook book said to do and back in my early stages of cooking I was more exact in my direction following. Now it's tradition.
And although it's not a tradition I also made these:
And again, not a tradition, but something we did this year: I cut out five hearts (one for each of us). On three of them I wrote, "What do you love about Kaden/Blue/Toby?" On the other two I wrote I John 4:7and Matthew 22:37. Before dinner we took turns pulling a heart and reading/answering. After dinner I had some Valentine madlibs for us to do which about had the boys rolling on the floor. Nothing like teaching boys about adjectives and then suddenly they are thrilled that they can put "stinky" and "yucky" in front of everything. I so don't get boy humor.
I cook on Valentine's Day but we also have a date night nearish the holiday. This year we went out Saturday without the boys.
Presents are optional, usually small. This year Kevin went bigger than usual and kinda broke the "no flowers" rule. He got me this:
I knew I was getting a potted plant because picking out the pot was part of our date Saturday. And I knew that the only plant it made sense to get me was a lemon tree because I've been asking for a lemon tree for oh, about nine years now, but he has stubbornly refused. I can't explain why I've wanted a lemon tree or why he refused to get me one, but seriously for years and years and I've been saying, "When are you going to plant my lemon tree?" I even said it SATURDAY MORNING before I ever knew about the whole pot-picking-plan and I got my usual answer, "You're not getting a lemon tree." Liar. It had been hidden in the garage under a blanket for days. How did I not notice that?!
That was pretty much the while-kids-were-awake part of Valentine's in the Stratton household this year, but I'm always up for new ideas. If you did something especially fun and lovey dovey as a family, let me know. And it's Wednesday, so consider that the "Midweek Mommy Question." How do you make Valentine's Day fun with kids?
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