This turned out to be kind of a big Valentine's Day. Normally we don't really do much. But I guess this one was extra-special, since it's the 15th anniversary of the day that "Cupid" showed up at the door my apartment and left flowers and a pie. It wasn't too many weeks later than Cupid and I got engaged. If it hadn't been for that Valentine's Day, who knows if we'd even be married today.

Even with Valentine's having that romantic start for us, we don't really get into it all that much. I usually make a nice dinner, James gets me chocolate, we do some candy for the kids, etc. But that's about it.

Not this year!

First, I decided that my kids needed to get outside themselves a bit and serve someone else (after a little meltdown last year when someone who shall remain nameless didn't think their small gift was quite enough...) So this year the kids made Valentines and gave them to some elderly sisters in our ward and to Grandma (although Grandma's Valentines are going out in the mail tomorrow morning. Oops!). Sariah and I used the last of our red watercolor paint to create pink and red paper for this project. Mom made the Swedish woven hearts with that paper. Then the kids wrote or drew little cards to put inside.



Friday I was surprised by a delivery of beautiful flowers. Then James and I went out to dinner to our small town's new fine restaurant. (Which I highly recommend to anyone who lives here! Imagine a restaurant in our town, of all places, where food is art. Where you can go for a romantic anniversary. Imagine something nicer than Applebees. It was wonderful! Even if we did have to pay for it all ourselves because we couldn't get the gift certificate from restaurant.com to print out.)

Today I had the kids decorate cookies. A friend told me that her mom started a tradition where she baked a huge heart cookie, then everyone in the family decorated a small cookie to represent themselves, which they put on the big one. I thought that was pretty sweet, so we tried it. And then Dallin wanted to decorate James' gift box like a monster, as you can see above. (All the stuff at the bottom is "James" spelled backwards, minus the "e". Not sure if Dallin forgot how to spell it or if he was running out of room.")

We do our small gifts at dinner time, much to the children's dismay (they want it done at breakfast). I made these cute little felt heart bag things to hold the goodies. As usual, they got way too much candy because I always forget that 1) Daddy will go and get candy too and 2) they will get candy at school and church and probably from somewhere else that I won't think of either. So yeah, we are candied out, and we still have a lot to eat. I wanted to go easy on the candy and do some small gifts, so I got Dallin a couple of cool rocks and Sariah a little wooden dog. But they still got lots of candy.

Oh, and the kids knew exactly what Daddy needed for Valentine's: some licorice (because it's his favorite) and some gum, lots of gum (because Dallin and Sariah have stolen so much of it in the past that he never has any when he wants it). Mom went with non-sweet treats for Daddy. And Daddy knew the way to Mommy's heart by going with, you guess it, chocolate.

So Happy Valentine's Day!