Saturday, May 14, 2016

Valentine's Day Festivities

February brought two exciting events....Valentine's Day and Ben's birthday.  Let's start with Valentine's Day.  That weekend, there was a Daddy-Daughter dance that Paul brought the girls to and they had a great time dancing and having fun.  The girls got all dressed up and looked beautiful!

 Looking good!
 This is the promised crazy picture after the nice picture - even Matthew got into this one! It actually turned out cute.
While Daddy took the girls out, I stayed home with the boys.  After Matthew went to bed early, Ben and I had our own date.  We made pizza from scratch, which was a pretty funny experience with the dough.  Ben enjoyed watching it cook too. 
Here is our final product - we decided it looked like the United States.  We divided it up with pepperoni on Ben's side (he picked the southern states) and tomato and goat cheese went to the Yankee states :)  It was really tasty so Ben wrote down everything we did and added it to my recipe book, titled, "Pizza by Mom and Ben - Homemade and Finger-Licking Good".
Valentine's Day brought the tradition of flowers being delivered to the girls in the house by Patch - thank you!  The girls are loving this tradition!
And the kids were all excited to find a few goodies on the table for them in the morning.  Their favorite part was actually the coupon books I made for them.  This has become a tradition, but I try to change it up a little each year.  This year's coupons included an extra dessert coupon, Mom or Dad does my chores for the day coupon, 30 minutes of screen time and you get to pick dinner for the next night (which is Juliette's favorite coupon as she is picky about dinner).  Those were a few of the favorites this year.  
 Daddy then made us heart shaped pancakes for breakfast - plain and chocolate chip!
The rest of the day was spent at Ben's Valentine's Day soccer tournament, but it was well spent as they came in second in their division! 
 Trophies earned are so much more meaningful!
 After our Valentine's Day Massacre dinner last year (remember our lobster story?), we went safe this year and made a heart shaped meatloaf, which everybody likes.  It was a nice dinner to top off a nice day!
Paul and I even managed to get out for a date right around Valentine's Day.  We went to one of the wine and painting places and had a great time.  We worked on the Chicago skyline together - it was really fun!

 Paul's painting is on the left and mine is on the right, but they ended up looking really good together!
 Our finished product!  It was a very fun evening!
 Happy Valentine's Day!!

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