Story of our Lives: Valentine's Day

"What greater thing is there for human souls than to feel that they are joined for life - to be with each other in silent unspeakable memories."

George Eliot

I hope you all had a wonderful Valentine's Day! Ours started off a little, let's see, how shall I put it, shaky, at best. The kids were in not so rare form, and Brody was up before 6am, Nathan threw his back out and could barely walk, but things got a bit better (or maybe I was just more able to deal with everything) after I took a nap with Brody. When I woke up, I had roses waiting for me, and they were beautiful, and of course made me instantly happy. I went out with Brody and picked up some last minute things for our fondue dinner, and also made a stop to get Nathan a heat/cold pad for his back. Thankfully the pad I got is amazing, and has a band to hold the pad in place so he could walk around with it on, etc. He said it made him feel much better so he wasn't stuck in one position. We decided to do an early dinner, and the kids were getting really excited and were helping hand us food and throw things away. We made a copy cat recipe from The Melting Pot, it is their Swiss cheese fondue, and served it with sourdough and french bread, carrots, asparagus, broccoli, and baby bella mushrooms. I have to admit that I thought the kids would avoid the veggies altogether, but they loved trying all the different things to see what they tasted like with the cheese. My personal favorites were the mushrooms and asparagus. We have LOTS of leftovers, and will heat it up again for lunch today. We then exchanged gifts. Nathan was really excited about his new pjs and took a bath to help his back some more and change into them. The kids were very excited about their gifts, and surprisingly didn't even ask about their candy, in part because they were stuffed and knew we still had the chocolate fondue to eat. Brody hugged his little dog I gave him for the rest of the night, and made me read his new books to him over and over and over again. The kids gave me a really cute card (Nathan gave me a really nice card also) and Nathan gave me a gorgeous necklace. It is back and red and very "me." I put it on right away, so you may be able to see it in the pictures. The kids got me earrings to match (although they are not an actual set, they go perfectly together. Again, they are very "me" and I love them so much!!! My four Valentine's made me feel very special and loved. We decided to wait until after Brody went to sleep to make the chocolate fondue, but we had to wait a bit before his bed time. I had rented Madagascar 2 the night before, so we all watched that together. (It was cute.) and Brody lasted almost half way through it before he started saying "night night" and waving to us, letting us know he was ready for bed. Nathan had made the chocolate fondue while I was putting Brody to bed, and when I came downstairs, we cut up the fruit and angel food cake and brought it into the living room to finish watching the movie. We cut up kiwi, bananas, strawberries, and grapes. The bananas, strawberries and kiwi were my favorites. The kids loved the grapes the most. After we cleaned up, we played Parcheese. This was our first time playing this game together, and it went surprisingly well. I am so happy we can do things like that now. Nathan won, with Ty coming very close to winning. We said goodnight to the kids and crashed afterwards. It was around 930 when we finished the game. We watched the movie "W." but we were both so tired, we decided to call it quits and stop the movie 1/2 way through. All in all, despite the rough start to the day, it was a really nice Valentine's Day, and I think we all felt loved.