I used to hate Valentines Day...but somehow having children made this holiday worth-while to me, go figure. But really? Who wouldn't be excited to show some lovin' to those adorable three up above? :)
I thought today might be a little bit of a let-down for them, since we had all the V-day parties yesterday...but I think it came out all right.
When we came down first thing, Aaron (who gets up before everyone else) had made a giant streamer heart for the kids to walk through. That made their whole day...especially Lincoln's. Ivan was pretty funny to watch come through too. Adelia came down with me, so there is no video of us, but she was excited.
I had this great idea to make Aaron and the kids a Valentine shirt using iron-on transfers. So I bought all the stuff and brought it home and then realized, "What the heck do you put on a man's t-shirt for V-day?" Oops. After some google searching, I came up with "I put the MAN in ROMANCE" I thought it was funny. I'm still not sure what Aaron thought when he opened his...but, like a good husband, he wore it to work today. :)
The mailboxes are from an FHE project we did a couple weeks ago. The idea was that each kid got a mail box, and every day until Valentines Day we'd write little notes to each other stating the things we loved about each other, and put them in the mail boxes, and then open them on V-day. My kids were really excited about this project for about the first two days, and then kind of forgot it. But they still got their mailboxes to open this morning. I rolled up their shirts and tucked them inside.
And of course they got their box of chocolate hearts as a reward for memorizing their poems.
And Aaron and I each wrote the kids a Valentine note, which they seemed to really like.
Aaron made us heart-shaped cinnamon rolls and orange juice for breakfast. And we got to eat them on our heart-shaped plates. We're so festive! My mom would be proud.
After that we had kind of a low-key morning. We took Aaron to work, then ran to the store for a couple things I needed for dinner. Then we came home and cleaned up the house, and I started making our annual Valentines Day dessert, Black Forest Cherry Cake.
I'd just taken the cakes out of the oven, when Aaron's mom came over to watch the kiddos so I could go to my doctor's appointment. I'm on weekly visits and pelvic exams these days...what a way to spend Valentines Day by getting my Group B Strep Test and my uterus checked. Oh boy. But actually, the appointment turned out to be the highlight of the day because I found out that I am 2 1/2 centimeters dilated! Hooray! I don't think that means the baby will be here any earlier than we thought, I tend to always dilate early and stay that way...but it does mean the end is in sight and that my body is getting ready for Oliver to come out. What a glorious day that will be. My due date isn't until March 13th, but the doctor said he's strip my membranes next time I go in, if I want him to. He also said he could induce me as early as March 6th, if I wanted to. I've never been induced. Things to think about.
I went home from my appointment, and Debbie took the two boys home with her to play for awhile. So Del and I finished up the cake.
This picture is before I got the homemade stuff. You can already see the Reddy Whip starting to slide off the top.
The recipe has you make the entire thing from scratch...but this year I decided to cheat a little. I bought cherry pie filling and Reddy Whip, instead of making my own. The pie filling worked fine, but the Reddy Whip was a bad, bad idea. It's not as thick and homemade whip cream, and so it started to slide off the cake and down the sides. It looked awful, so I ended up going to the store and buying cream and making homemade whip cream anyway. I ended up scraping off the Reddy Whip mess on the bottom of the plate, and then spreading the real stuff all around the outside..but there was no way to save the cake crumbs on the sides. The finished product looked like the Black Forest in winter...all white. :) I guess that's what I get fro trying to cheat. But it still tasted good.
While I was trying to solve the cake disaster, Adelia decided to help clean up. She pulled a chair over to the sink and said, "Mom, I do da dish."
We ate Valentines dinner at home, because I hate going out with the throngs of people we knew would be out. Aaron's parents and our kids ate with us, so our table was full of people we love. Aaron made steaks, and I threw together a salad. It turned out awesome. And we had more fun than we would have going out.
Our kids were pretty wound and sugar-crazed by the end of the night, so I'll admit I was happy to put them in bed. But over all, I'd say we had a wonderful day of love.
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