Valentine's Day

The week before Valentine's Day, we started making preparations. I wanted to send Valentine's packages to our family that lives away from us, basically my siblings and their families, and Mom and Dad. I had the kids make Valentines for everyone, or write notes, and then we got fun Valentine's treats and games and toys and put them into packages and sent them to our families in Oregon and Idaho. We also made one for Brian and Sammy's family to deliver it to them. It was a fun project. Also, very expensive. 🤑🤑 Between all the fun things we bought and shipping costs, it ended up being a little bit painful. For sure not something we'll be doing every year. 😬

Our Valentine's Day was a little different this year. Daniel invited me to a morning date, snowshoeing in the mountains. Emily came to watch our kids while we were gone. It was very cold, very peaceful up there, and very fun. I really loved doing an active date for Valentine's Day. Being together, enjoying the serenity, and getting some exercise in was the best. We hiked about 3 miles total, and it was just beautiful up there, with all the snow and the trees. A few times, I just stopped and drank in the silence and peace. 

After our hike, we went to breakfast at the Pancake House and had a huge breakfast. We were both famished at that point. And it was delicious. 

That afternoon, the kids and I delivered more Valentine's treats to our neighbors and friends. We had started the Saturday before Valentine's day; I had the kids take treat bags and played to the neighbors closest to us. Then on the day before Valentine's Day, we skipped doing school and made chocolate covered pretzel rods for more of our friends. We had a lot of fun making the pretzels, and the next day, we had fun delivering them. Valentine's Day is our thing. 😏

I did a special dinner that night for the family: fondue. I made a cheese sauce and a cashew "cheeze" sauce, steamed some veggies, roasted potatoes and chopped a bunch of things, got a charcuterie board prepared, and we had a fondue dinner, dipping things into the cheese sauces. Then, the same for dessert: chocolate sauce with marshmallows, cookies, brownie bites, and berries. It was very fun! It may be our new Valentine's dinner tradition. 

The kids made a massive fort with Aunt Emily and played in it for the whole day, and days afterwards. 

Valentine's Bingo for family home evening activity