Valentine's Day

We had the funnest Valentine's Day yesterday. Every year up until this one, I think of it as more of a romantic holiday rather than just a holiday of love. This year, Scott and I put more emphasis on the whole family, rather than just the two of us. It's fun to have the romantic holiday, but well, we didn't have any babysitters lined up, and so it seemed better to just include everyone.

It started with a Valentine's primary activity in the morning, then we went to Lowe's to do their Saturday bi-monthly project (Valentine mailboxes). Tyler and Emalyn had lots of fun pounding in all the nails with their hammers. After that, it was nap time and quiet time. Tyler and Emalyn were suprisingly cooperative with that, so Scott and I got to read together (we've been reading Warrior Heir by Cinda Williams Chima), and that was fun to have time together in the middle of the day without our kids.

After that, we started on dinner, which I'd been planning for a week. It was so much fun to have the kids help. We made a cake and decorated it with chopped strawberries that the kids arranged to say "I love you". It was so cute. Then we had strawberry lemonade (with real strawberries!!) We had spinach raviolini and asparagus. Add that to the BEAUTIFUL pink roses that Scott brought home for me, and this is what you get:

I thought that we had a better picture of the cake, but it turns out we didn't take one. But arent' those roses beautiful? It was a nice surprise.

Anyway, it was a really fun day. As I was writing about it, I realized that we didn't really do anything that spectacular. In fact, when I woke up that morning, I was in a horrible mood. Scott and I'd gotten to bed late, and with different kids waking us up in the night and then Emalyn getting us up at 6:30am, we got around 4-5 hours of sleep that night. I was really sad to be awake that early. I'd made these fun plans for the day, and I really didn't want to do it all being so tired. But we did it all anyway, and I just remember going to bed that night and thinking about how much fun we'd had making that dinner together. I guess it was just the excitement of the kids over making everything that made it just really special. It was a day that I hope we remember.

Also, on a different note that has absolutely nothing to do with Valentine's Day, I finally got to see my mission president and his wife at the temple on Friday! A while back, I posted about how they were called to be the president and matron of the Idaho Falls temple, and they've been there since November. I've been trying to see them every time I've gone to the temple ever since they started, but they've never been there when I was there. Sometimes I just missed them by half an hour. But they were there on Friday evening! When I saw them, everything I'd been planning to say flew out of my mind, and I just stood there with the biggest grin on my face because I was just so overjoyed to see them. I love them so much, and it's been about 7 years since I saw them last. He was in between meetings, so I knew he didn't have much time, but he kept saying to not worry about it, they had time to talk to me. We caught up on stuff that's been happening in the mission and in our lives since. We only talked for probably about 15 minutes, but everytime I think about it, I just keep smiling. I had some rough times on my mission, and President Stoddard talked to me and was there for me when I was really struggling. They are so dear to me.