The Perfect Valentine's Day

Since Ryan and I will be celebrating Valentine's Day next week (when we have free child care), we decided to make today a family affair. So I decided to go all out and give the kids a Valentine's party. Now before you get all impressed, I only invited one other family (my friend and her two daughters whose age match my kids) and I have never thrown either of my kids a birthday party to this degree. And I guess I missed my teaching days.

We started by making our own pizzas with heart-shaped pepperonis and then cut sugar cookies from already-made dough. (While the cookie dough was very good itself, the cookies were a disaster at almost every point, although the kids didn't seem to notice!) Later we had crafts: lacing hearts with red ribbon, gluing hearts around the paper plate to make a heart wreath, and gluing your name on the heart (like the conversation heart candies) for the older ones. All the kids seemed to have fun, although when it came to the conversation name heart, Reed said with a cheerful attitude, “That's not really fun, but I'll do it anyway.”

Tonight we cooked a fancy dinner at home. Grandma Pat's famous golden chicken nuggets, baked potatoes, individual sweet potato casseroles, stir-fried ginger pea-pods, and pudding with cookie crumbs (from above failed cookie attempt) for dessert. Reed was impressed that I could make chicken nuggets that taste good! And for the peas I got the thumbs-up from Reed and the index-fingers-up from Ashton! We even ate on the china and (two of us) used the crystal glasses! (Granted: while making all this, I actually said to the kids, “Mommy is trying to make a special dinner for you and all you're doing is screaming at each other! Go to your rooms!”)

It was a pretty perfect day!