Be mine

We don't do too much for Valentine's Day.  Since our anniversary is only 10 days earlier, it seems like too much all together.  So we usually go out for our anniversary and keep Valentine's Day simple.  This year we went to Olive Garden with a gift card I got for free through MyPoints.  Our cousin Sabrina babysat.  It was so nice to have a night out!


Annalee had just started preschool February 9th, and her second class was a Valentine's party on the 14th.  I signed up to bring cookies.  Felt kinda weird, like a foreshadowing of elementary school.  I just remember so many times when I had to bring treats to school for birthdays or parties, so my mom would make them or buy them.  Now I'm on the other side of that.  Weird.  My daughter is still three; grade school just seems so far away......Anyway.....

She needed Valentines, too.  A few years ago I bought two boxes of Valentines for 50 cents, knowing that someday she'd need to use them, and hey!  Disney Princesses and Spiderman never go out of style!  Now I remembered I had them, but we had just moved in, so the chances of finding them was about .002 %.  I guess luck was with me, because I opened a box, looking for something else, and found them!  I was a little worried about the Valentines Annalee would get, though.  I had been given a list with the kids' names on it the week before.  But because she was so new, Annalee wasn't on the list the parents received.  I worried all weekend about her showing up to a party and everyone getting Valentines except her.  She might not notice, right?  If there were lots of punch and cookies?  Hmmmm, I think she would notice. 

I called the preschool on Monday and they assured me that they had many extras for kids who forgot to bring them.  Turns out, it didn't matter.  In the wildness of the party the teacher made no attempt to match Valentines with who they were for.  Annalee got 12 Valentines like everyone else, but they said things like "To: Makayla, From: Cody" and she even got a few of her own!  Ha ha ha, I bet that was a crazy party with 12 three year olds!

Annalee made a homemade Valentine for Daddy and for Great-Grammy that lives in the assisted living home in town.

Nathan had a late night at work and didn't get home til the kids were in bed.  I surprised him with a little candlelit dinner of chicken salsa soup and tortilla chips.  I didn't have a candleholder, so I put some dry beans in a mug to hold the candle.

We ate kneeling down in the living room around an intable.