Lovey Dovey Love Day

Valentines Day was full of celebration. 

There was a preschool party with my Young Learners.

There was a preschool playdate at Crystal Bridges. My favorite part was during the musical performance portion when they did a song about a "dead skunk in the middle of the road". If you've been to NWA in February (skunk mating month), you know that seeing a dead skunk in the road is a daily occurrence. There's a lot of road kill here. 

There were favorite books to be reenacted. 

There were paper plate heart hats to make with adorable girlfriends. 

I just love this pic of Annalise. What a cutie! 

There were sugar cookies to frost and sprinkle...

...and eat. 

There was a preschool valentine party at BVPS. 

And a valentine party in Quincy's class that Daddy got to attend (Q's teacher has a strict policy that doesn't allow any younger siblings to come inside her classroom.) Q loved having daddy there and we met up with her in the cafeteria for a lunch date. 

There was a valentine exchange in Reese's class. Funny story, I'd forgotten until the last second on our way out the door (for 3 hours of class parties) that I was supposed to bring a jar full of candy to Reese's class for a guessing game. Crumbs! No time! How did I forget this one? Not wanting to be the loser mom, I dug through the pantry to see if I could come up with something, remembering that I had a bag of M&Ms in there that would hopefully fill a jelly jar. No dice. I couldn't find the M&Ms anywhere! But when I reached into the drawer for a jar, the one I pulled out was full of jelly beans! Sweet! I remembered Reese had won it in a guessing game at Jackson's birthday party a couple months ago. Jelly bellies don't expire, right? Right. We totally regifted the candy jar and called it good enough. And luckily, Katie had been a good mom and written down how many jelly beans were in the jar inside under the lid, so I didn't even have to count them. Winning! So thanks to Katie for throwing awesome birthday parties so I didn't fail my kid on Friday ;)

I watched the Seidel kids after school Friday and let the kids frost and decorate more cookies and have a gluttonous free-for-all on their valentine candies. 

Friday night we gave the children their valentines (scented bands for the rainbow looms for Reese and Quincy, and two large bouncy playground balls and a Jake and the Neverland Pirates coloring book for Corbin and Soren), and had stuffies for everyone too. We took the kids out for our traditional dinner at a restaurant and ended up running into several friends at On The Border. Quincy fell asleep on the booth. Soren wanted to sit ON the table and eat everyone's beans. Reese and Corbin stuffed their faces and it was a pretty rambunctious dining experience. To encourage our monthly theme of gratitude, we went around the table and each said some things we are grateful for and some things that we love. 

We came home and put the kiddies to bed and exchanged simple offerings of chocolate covered pretzels, a card, and local micro-brewed cream sodas (for him) and assorted chocolates and fresh tulips (for me). We'd decided we've outgrown big gifts and expectations and decided to invest in a new mattress for our bed (ours was a hand me down when it was gifted to us and is going on 14 years old. Time for a new mattress and better sleep!) so it was kind of funny that we both ended up buying each other something anyway just because. It doesn't always work out that way, and we're ok with that, but it's nice that we were both feelin' the love and got each other a little something something. 

On Saturday we had a sitter and a gift card left from Christmas so we went to dinner at Red Lobster. 

We did a little shopping and I tried on a gorgeous dress at banana republic and then discovered I have very expensive taste. $130 for a knit summer dress? Pass. You bet this thrifty girl will hunt it down at the outlets this summer for like $20. We left empty handed but it was fun to go clothes shopping together, we haven't done that in...years?? 

 When we got home we reminisced about our first Valentine's day as a married couple 12 years ago.  We'd gone to a Slovakia vs France Olympic Hockey game and eaten chocolate covered pretzels in Salt Lake City, Utah. This year, our Valentine's dinner with four small kids had been just as loud, wild and crazy as a hockey game with the same amount of missing teeth and only slightly less fighting. We'd then come home to watch the Winter Olympics on tv and eat chocolate covered pretzels. So basically nothing has changed in the last 12 years except that now we are aware of how much more we have to love and live for than ourselves. It was a full circle moment and made our love-day-weekend just right. I really believe that more than "having a valentine, this day is about giving thanks and giving love to people who are important to us. We are all so lucky to be able to have and feel so much to love.