Valentine’s Day Celebrated Any Time is Sweet

We celebrated Valentine’s a week late. Hey, hey, I had a good reason. Since we had company all week it was virtually impossible to try and have it then.

Valentine’s Day has become a tradition around here.  You can see what we’ve done over the years – 2009,  2012, and 2013 was the year we added mailboxes and little gifts to our celebration, and here’s one more post on our 2013 celebration.

This year the kids started wondering why we hadn’t had our Valentine’s Day. I told them we’d do it the next week and they were happy about that. That makes me glad knowing they like something enough to ask about it.

It may be all the little gifts I give them all week long. 🙂

If you haven’t had this candy before you won’t understand the little note I made but the candy is an apple candy covered with caramel.

I gave the boys the one on the left that reads “You are a jolly good man,” and the girls got, “You are soooo sweet.”  With the notes I put a Jolly Rancher candy.

(excuse the blurry picture)

Another day I did a Rolo chocolate and put a note with it that read “I Ro-la ways love you.” That one I had to explain over and over because they just couldn’t get it. So I guess my play on words was a little lacking. 🙂

The last day (we ended on Thursday) I gave Russ a Snickers bar with a note that read, “Don’t Snicker but I love you.” Seth & Wesley (my two older boys) received a Twix bar that said, “Be-twix me and you I think you’re special.” Then for my 3 youngest, Serenity, Justus and Audrey, I gave them bubble gum tape with a note that read, “My love for you could never be measured.”

Sometimes it’s really hard as the kids get older to have consistency in your week since the older ones end up doing some of their own activities so I really appreciate that my family will try and be there for these occasions.  I moved it up a day because one of them had to go hike the Grand Canyon on Friday…. for fun. Yeah, I can’t imagine it either but maybe if I had the body for it it would be a different story. haha

So Thursday night was the grand finale of our Valentine’s celebration. We usually eat our meal in different locations of the house but this year we kept it in one place. Because of that I decided we had to really make it different. And thus, the idea of the tent was born.

It wasn’t much to look at from the outside…

…but the inside was rather charming looking. 🙂

And there’s the family.

Our first course was a cheese fondue with vegetables. It was a nice beginning. All the prep could be done ahead (which it wasn’t) and I could eat with them while the rest of the meal was in the oven (which I did).

The only problem with the tent idea was we were on hardwood floors and my hubby couldn’t get quite as comfortable as he would have liked. By the end of the meal everyone was laid flat out after having twisted and turned trying to ease ankle bones, feet gone to sleep and cramped legs. 🙂 hehe

Our main meal was simple:

Stuffed Shells

Green Salad

Garlic Sourdough Bread

And the evening ended with Root Beer floats. I attached notes to them that said, “You float my boat” and “I’ll always root for you.”

Next time I think I’ll have to have a supply of pillows on hand for those of us who enjoy lounging on padded comfort.