Valentine's Weekend

Yes, I realize that Valentine's Day is only on the 14th, but it fell on a Monday so we celebrated for two days since we had family time on Sunday. After playing in the snow the kids came in to warm up with some hot chocolate. They didn't know I had heart-shaped marshmallows for it, so they were pretty excited.

For dinner I decided to have a diner theme and serve chili cheese hot dogs (nitrite and nitrate free for those of you who know I try not to serve my kids processed meat), homemade french fries and red Crush in the bottles. My secret sister from church gave me some festive plates and napkins for the occasion so it made setting the table cute and easy, I just added my own red chargers and special touches.

Jason's uncle Roy and aunt Mona got us these soda glasses from our wedding registry years ago. I don't use them often because they're not practical for every day, but I love them and they come in handy for special times, so I'm really glad that we have them. I thought they would be perfect to serve french fries in for my diner theme, but I quickly realized it would take a LOT of fries to make them stick out of the top like I wanted and a) I wasn't cutting up any more potatoes and b) that's way too many fries, especially for the kids.

And it just wouldn't be a party without dessert, would it? I had a chocolate covered strawberry for everyone's place serving and then I had a dessert plate on the table.

I made Jason and the kids a card from a tutorial I saw online. It had pictures of us together from throughout the year and it folds up to look like a gift tag. They were really fun to make and all the supplies I already had, so they didn't cost me a dime.

I also used my supply stash to decorate some straws for our bottled pop. To my shock and excitement, the kids aren't big fans of red pop. Awesome, since they don't need to be drinking it anyway, but now I know they won't start asking for it now that I let them taste it.

Jordis gave up on the straw for some reason.

It was a fun evening together.

On Valentine's Day I started the kids off with some heart shaped waffles and we had some fun cookies for lunch. Xander said he was really excited to find his cookie in his lunch box. We also sent some treats for his teachers. They are pretzels shaped like letters covered with chocolate and red sugar, but you couldn't really tell by the time they were in the package.

That night, Jason and I got to go on a dinner date. My mom and step-dad gave us some money and babysat the kids for us. It was a great weekend!

Now we move on to Mardi Gras!