Valentines

               On Friday, each of the girls came home from school bursting with stories about their valentines day parties and an armful of cards and treats from their friends.  So they sorted and snacked and played.

In the evening, Husband and I went to a Valentines dinner hosted by our church.  It was an adults only activity so we left the girls with a friend for the evening and called it our date night.  We were assigned to a table with three other couples, none of whom we knew.  Two couples were older and then the other couple was close to our age and isn’t active in our ward.  But I think the seating arrangement was more inspired by the fact that we are both hugely pregnant.  In fact, our due dates are only two dates apart so we joked about racing to delivery.  

               The evening was a lot of fun with a buffet style pasta and salad bar and potluck desserts.  One of our neighbors is a well known musician and he played emcee for the evening, hamming up the intros and we started the evening and then playing piano through dinner.  After dinner there was a mini-talent show as each auxiliary was responsible for providing a number of some sort.  There was plenty of talent and comedy and we had a great evening.  But after two hours, I was pretty uncomfortable and we had to slip away as soon as we could.

               The second part of our Valentines weekend was with the kids.  We had lots of cousins to play with including my brother (and his 5 kids), my SIL (and her 2 kids) and 2 of my cousins (and their collective 6 kids) plus our 3 kids.  Definitely a houseful!  They spent the morning playing at McDonalds during the baby shower (more later), visiting the horses at Grandpas house and then sledding at the park.  They lasted much longer than I thought they would but were having such a great time they didn’t want to stop.  Eventually they came back to the house and mostly settled in for a movie (Book of Life) and popcorn.  We had a quick dinner of sandwiches leftover from the shower and then a mini-valentines party.  They made a little flower craft and decorated heart shaped sugar cookies.  We had talked about some other activities but they were pretty worn out from their busy day.  So my cousins took their families home and the rest of us settled in for another movie (by then I was sent to bed with contractions which fortunately disappeared sometime in the night) and a cousin sleepover.

               On Sunday morning, husband and I made a big breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon and chocolate chip pancakes (much to everyone’s delight).  The rest of the cousins said goodbye and we got our little family ready for church.  Husband and I both taught Primary and the kids were especially full of energy and excitement.  So we were eager to get home and settle in for a quiet evening.  We watched a movie, Husband and I visited a neighbor and then made dinner together.  I put a special Valentines treat on everyone’s plate and the girls were thrilled with that as their Valentines surprise.  Eventually we got them settled into bed and Husband spent a few hours working from our home office while I went to bed.  Cause we’re super romantic like that.  (or just very pregnant and up against some big work deadlines.)