V-Day 2012: a recap for the family journal

I really love Valentine's Day. I love the challenge of taking a small holiday and making it special. I love that you can dress in pink AND red and be accepted, even cute;) I love that we get to celebrate love and kindness. For these reasons and more, we try and do it up around here.

We started off the day with raspberry heart-shaped pancakes, "heart" shaped fried eggs, and heart shaped banana slices...(notice there are only 5 bananas per kids -- the banana-trimming got old, pretty quickly for me). The kids also each received a new Valentine's Day book, wrapped underneath their plate -- a tradition that I grew up with and loved. Note to self for future Valentine book purchases: don't buy one child a "lift the flap" book if you are buying the other kid a "normal" book. Disappointment is, apparently, inevitable. And once said folly has been realized, don't even bother trying to convince the flap-deprived child of how cool their book is: your efforts will be in vain.


Breakfast was followed up by sugar cookies -- baking, not eating (yet). We tried out a new recipe that uses sour cream and I am very sorry to report that they are delicious. I need to get those cookies out of my house.



After the cookies were baked, the kiddos got all dressed up in their darling new Valentine's Day clothes (compliments of Grandma -- thank you!) and we met up with Brian for a romantic Valentines lunch at Panda Express ;) It was such a huge treat to see my Valentine mid-day. Work demands have kept us from seeing that guy very much at all the past month, so lunch was extra EXTRA special.

And extra EXTRA cute. Look at those kids!
I seriously need to get some new attention grabbing look-at-the-camera-and-smile-right-NOW skills. And better lighting...

That night, we had our traditional "Fancy Family Dinner" (thank you, Costco heat-and-serve lasagna) and just enjoyed being together on a special day.

Look how real I am - posting a picture of us with piles and piles of unfolded (but clean) laundry in the background :) Not to mention that neither of the kids is wearing pants at the dinner table...whoops.

Happy Valentines Day to you and yours!