Valentine's Day...

I see a lot of negative posting about Valentine’s Day. Well, holidays in general. And I agree, they are WAAAYY over commercialized! I mean, do you really need to have Christmas trees right next to your Independence Day display? Probably not. But whatever, I’m not in retail, so I’ll just decorate my house when I’m good and ready.  Personally, I like holidays. I like decorating for them. I’m not Irish, but I have my St. Paddy’s Day stuff ready to go on display tomorrow! After that it’s Easter, Memorial Day, Independence Day and Labor Day before we dive back into the holiday season (Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s). It’s the fun of it. The whimsy of decorating…and for me, it helps break up the monotony of the long, gloomy winter up here. I do agree with a lot of things that I see, though…

I don’t need a special day to know that my children love me. They show me every day with their actions and the hugs and kisses that they share with me.

My children don’t need a special day to know that I love them. I tell them every day…over and over…and I show them with the things that I do and by living my life with their best interests at heart.

I don’t need a special day to know that my husband loves me.  He tells me daily, makes countless sacrifices for me and our children and is the rock in our family.

I don’t need a special day to tell my husband that I love him.  I tell him daily, put him and the children at the center of my world and am there for him no matter what.

Not to mention the fact that I have an anniversary to celebrate the loving relationship that I share with my husband, birthdays to celebrate the amazing children that we have along with Mother’s and Father’s Day to celebrate joining the world of parenthood. 

But I can always enjoy a special day about love just for the sake of it. We spend Valentine’s Day as a family…we all love each other…the holiday is about love.  So, why not? We do special things like make heart shaped foods, dye things pink and/or red and make heart shaped crafts.  We also go out to dinner as a family. We don’t eat out too often and when we do, it is rarely without a specific reason.  So, this is our reason…we love each other, so nobody has too cook or do dishes, we go out instead and enjoy a yummy meal together.  This year instead of making heart pancakes or cinnamon rolls with pink icing, we decided to surprise the kids with breakfast out.  It was fun on so many different levels. First of all, it is a long weekend (i.e. winter break) for the public school system…the kids have Thursday, Friday, the weekend and Monday off…but my hubby still has to work a regular today and Friday…so he and I got up early and got ready (him for work and me for a day of errands)…then we woke the kids up and got them dressed. We didn’t offer drinks or breakfast, just dressed them and ushered them out the door. It was quite funny. Neither of them are morning people and neither of them were thrilled to be woken early on a ‘no-alarm-day’. LOL.  They were still nearly asleep in the car on the way there and didn’t ‘wake up’ till we got to our destination.  I’d seen an advertisement that our local Chick-fil-A restaurant would be serving heart shaped biscuits for breakfast and we thought that the kids would find it a fun treat. We were not disappointed! The kids loved their breakfast treat…a double treat at that…breakfast out and shaped like hearts!  It was a great way to start our day.  Rounding out our day with a family supper at Red Lobster was the perfect way to spend the day celebrating our family’s love for each other. 

~Jac