Happy Heart Day

We enjoyed a few fun days of Valentine celebrations, starting with a date night for John and me on Saturday night.  We went out to dinner with five other couples, and then went to see Jerry Seinfeld perform at the Peabody in Daytona.  He was hilarious, although I think I laughed the hardest at the comedian who opened for him--he did a bit about Home Depot that had me in tears.  Why are the opening acts always the best?  Anyway, Seinfeld was also fantastic and we enjoyed every minute of it, especially at the end when he took ten minutes to answer audience questions.  (Lots of interesting inebriated comments from the Daytona crowd.)

On Sunday, we travelled to Jacksonville to celebrate a certain 7-year-old's birthday (Donald's) at a pretty swanky bowling alley.  This was our kids' first experience bowling, and they both really enjoyed it.  Anna caught on pretty quickly, although for some reason she preferred to throw her ball from about 4 feet behind the line and, due to lack of momentum, it got stuck halfway down the lane a few times.  She didn't mind, but I think the people who worked there did!

Here she is, cutie pie:

On Monday, I spent some time helping Will's class with a Valentine's Day project.  I looked all over the internet for ideas for a craft to do with them, before settling on some fingerprinted bookmarks I saw on the Oriental Trading Company website.  I decided to make them from cardstock instead of ordering the kits, and I also printed out some cards for the kids to decorate.  I cut slits in the back page of the card so that they could stick the completed bookmarks in them and then give the card as a gift to their parents or grandparents.

Pictures of Will's completed card:

(That's Darth Vader offering up a heart.  Darth Vader makes it onto all of Will's artwork lately.)

And the inside of the card, where Will got a little confused about which line to write on:

I think they turned out cute and his class had fun making them....so mission accomplished. :-)

Will and I spent Monday night addressing a batch of Star Wars Valentines for his buddies, and we also made a couple of cheesy Valentines for his teachers (idea borrowed from Family Fun magazine):

(Those are tubes of lotion in the middle.  See, I told you they were cheesy!)

On Tuesday, both kids brought home big bags of Valentines from their buddies and I tried to referee the amount of sugar they ingested (but didn't do very well, since I was helping them by eating quite a bit myself).

John and I have dined out on Valentine's Day once (I think) in the history of our relationship--that was back in 2006 when I was 7 months pregnant with Will.  We have never been very good about planning ahead and making reservations--and now that Will and Anna are here, there's the added issue of finding a babysitter.  So instead, I usually cook something elaborate or fattening (or both) that we normally wouldn't eat for dinner.  This year I didn't have much time for cooking, so I decided to make Pork and Lemon Orzotto (a Giada recipe from Everyday Pasta--awesome cookbook!).  It was delicious, and John and the kids devoured it, so I think I'll be making it again.  The orzotto was filling, so I went light on dessert--homemade ice cream with berries.  I also had a few awesome Angell & Phelps truffles, courtesy of John.

Now that's my love language.  Yum! :-)