Feb 14. 2015

I have been planning Valentine's Day since the horrible let-down day of New Year's (you take down all your decorations and it's the end of the holiday season and for a stay-at-home mom, it's just a sad day, so I started planning the next holiday).

We were going to have red, heart-shaped pancakes with heart-shaped strawberries for breakfast.  Then Greg and I were going to go on romantic bike ride like back in our Provo days.  Then we were going to tie-dye shirts as a family.  I was going to set the table beautifully and we were going to have a wonderful dinner and then put the kids to bed and play some two-player games to complete the day.

Then half-way through last week, I felt like we should go to the temple.  A few talks at church had mentioned temples and I thought, wouldn't it be nice to go to the temple.  After my wonderful Valentine's Day, I reasoned.  But no, it had to be as soon as possible, which was Valentine's Day.   I am an stanch believer that the temple does NOT count as a date because you don't even get to sit by each other. To my surprise, Greg didn't complain and even arranged for his dad to watch the kids.

So we were up dark and early Saturday morning and driving to the temple.  Meanwhile, the kids ate cereal for breakfast and opened their token gifts without us.   As for the temple, it was very temple-y.  You know.  It was the temple.  But I did make sure to take a picture when we left to mark the occassion and for once in a long time, I looked cute in the picture, but Greg closed his eyes and vetoed it from the blog.  LAME!

We had a nice chat and drive home, which is why I think we really needed to go.  Three kids, two time-intensive church callings, tutoring 5 days a week, and starting a business doesn't leave a lot of time for us to say to more than, Will you get Henry out of the _____? to each other.

When we got home, we rushed to complete the rest of our V-Day activities.  I didn't take a ton of pictures of how cute and perfect everything thing is because I didn't want to Mom-shame anyone.

We tie-dyed shirts.

 minus Henry, who got into drawers in the kitchen instead.

 Then I made this cake that I was on Pineterest before Christmas and was sooooo excited for and have been looking forward to for months.  It was ok.  Good thing it didn't take very long.  Don't get me wrong, it still has chocolate and sugar in it so I'm still eating it, but it's not as good as it looked on line.

Once the kids were in bed, Greg and I split a deck of cards and wrote things we liked about each other on the cards.  Then Greg proceeded to stomp me at Gin.  We made some delicious hot chocolate (Greg's idea and recipe) and went to bed.

Sunday I was still feeling a bit of the holiday spirit so I dressed all the kids in red.

Rex refused to take a normal picture.

 Alice refused to look at the camera,but we wore matching polka dots (on purpose)

 And this kid...good thing he's cute because he's been a bit of terror lately.

And Greg wore a blue sweater and left for church 2 hours before us (he's ward clerk).