Day of Love

Eric asked me to marry him (in a pretty awesome way) on Valentine's Day, so I try to make it special. This year, instead of hunting for a sitter and angling for a reservation, we stayed in.

The boys came home from school clutching their Valentine teddy bears that the fifth grade class had offered for sale as a fundraiser. Thinking I was being a super-cool mom, I ordered one for each boy. As it turned out, there were only a handful of kids who didn't get them, which kind of wrecked my vision of myself, but made me quite relieved my kids hadn't been among the sad few to go home bear-less!

When Eric arrived home from work, he brought chocolate for the boys and separate bouquets of flowers for Marley and me (hers were the pink tulips in the picture below). It melted my heart, but Marley was a little confused when I took her flowers from her, put them in a vase and then shrieked at her every time she tried to climb up on the table and play with them.

We fed the kids an early dinner of heart-shaped grilled cheese sandwiches, chocolate-covered strawberries and Biltmore grape juice in special red glasses. They ended their evening with chocolate-peanut butter brownies and a dramatic reading of my journal entry from that fateful night eleven years ago.

While Eric got them to bed, I put the finishing touches on my special surprise dinner just for us: Pad Thai. (I had told Eric that he could request a "genre" of food, and he chose Thai.) I had never made it before, and was a little nervous since I was using an "authentic" recipe, but it turned out to be a perfect choice because most of the labor-intensive steps could be done in the afternoon.

Maybe it's pregnancy-induced agoraphobia, but I loved our home-bound Valentine's Day. I think we'll make it a tradition.