Happy Valentine's Day!

4 years?  What can I say, I've been busy?  Nobody wants to hear a bunch of excuses, but to my defense I am in my last semester of graduate school and will get my MBA in May, hooray!  I need to update my layout, and for God's sake get some recent pictures up!

Anyway, this post is about Valentines Day.  Anybody who knows me, knows I go all out on holidays. I love most holidays, decorating, cooking, crafts with the kids, etc.  Valentine's is no exception; however,  I will say I do NOT like Valentines Day.  I never have, but I participate for the kids and try and make it special for them.

Valentine's is a made up holiday and an excuse for people to buy candy, which makes them fat, and flowers which die in a couple days anyway.  Diamonds are OK; however, why should we have a holiday to force men buy jewelry for women?  Diamonds are acceptable any day of the year! I have never been a flower person.  I told my husband from day one, do not buy me flowers for special occasions, though anything from Tiffany in a little blue box is acceptable :-)  I think flowers are a total waste of money; but I am a hypocrite this morning.  I went to Kroger to grab last minute items for our Valentine's celebration tonight (more on that later) and bought a small bouquet of flowers for my dining table.  So I bought my own flowers for valentines, but for pure decoration!

The last week Jerry and I have been scrambling to get the kids  crafts done.  Matthew is in fourth grade and had to make a valentine robot and  22 valentine's for his class.  I headed to Pinterest to try and find ideas for the robot and to Etsy for something crafty for the valentines. While I was browsing Etsy, my 16 year old daughter said she wanted to give out Valentine's too, what?   I agreed, but only with the promise she would help put it all together!

Hubby was put in charge of the robot, and I did the valentines.  So this past week we made numerous trips to Michael's, Hobby Lobby, Staples, Target, Walgreen's and Kroger.  Last night we were scrambling to get it all done and we finally finished it all about 8PM.  Bad mom moment, I didn't even take a picture of our masterpieces!  Masterpieces is a bit of an exaggeration, they were far from it, but they were done!

This morning I had every intention of making valentine heart pancakes, but had to actually get ready and put makeup on because I had to go into the school to drop off supplies for the class party.  Yoga pants and fuzzy slippers are not acceptable this morning!  I did not plan my morning well and ran out of time!  Ugh another bad mom moment, but I will make it up this evening.

Hubby and I don't celebrate Valentines Day by doing fancy romantic dinner out.  We always make it a family holiday.  I will admit, with the hustle and bustle of work, kids, school, graduate school, etc. we do not do a lot of sit down dinners as a family. I know this is really bad.  Valentines day is the exception.  I set the dining  table with Valentine dinnerware and fancy wine glasses for all.  I usually cook something fattening and rich and bake some yummy desserts.  Dinners of the past include anything from steak to a fondue bar.  This year I'm ordering pizza and not cooking.  I just don't have the time.  We are ordering hubby's favorite pizza , Grimaldi's in Grapevine, which will require me to travel about an hour round trip to pick it up.  I bought chocolate covered strawberries and red velvet cupcakes for dessert.  Hubby and I will drink a bottle of Caymus with our pizza, and the kids will drink sparkling grape juice from the fancy wine glasses.

The kids love this tradition and look forward to it every year.  So even though I don't like Valentine's Day and what it stands for, I love making the memories with the kids.  I only have one more year and my oldest will be off to college and will not be here to celebrate Valentine's, which makes me sad :-(

So Happy Valentine's Day Ya'll!