Valentine's Day

 

This holiday is definitely rising in the ranks of my favorites as the years go by.  It's a pretty simple formula at our house- flowers and chocolates and good foods and lots of love!  I wish I had a picture of the boys marching in a line over to give us these flowers, but I was too busy soaking up the sweet moment.  They are such gentlemen!

These beautiful roses kept for weeks, and we still have the hearts that were originally all over the kitchen and living room up in our bedroom now. 

Daddy and I had a mission training meeting with Elder Wong on Valentines Day, and we just stayed in our fancy clothes for our highly anticipated dinner date.  In the days leading up to the big night, the kids all expressed that making and serving us a candlelit dinner was what they were looking forward to the most about Valentines Day.  I love that this tradition has stuck! Valentines Day was on a Wednesday this year, but there were no church activities so we got to enjoy all being at home for the evening- a rare treat these days!  While we were waiting for dinner to be ready, Daddy helped me prepare some visuals for a Relief Society lesson I was teaching. 

Our table was beautifully set!

This dinner is equal parts exciting just being together for a one-on-one meal and delightful to watch the kids work together to create such a memorable and delicious experience for us! They are (almost) always willing to help me out in the kitchen, but they are on their own for this meal and I think they love it. 

I always love discovering these selfies on my phone.

End of the day, end of the meal, Leah was the main chef and she did an incredible job with the Italian wedding soup! The next week she helped me out by making it again and it was just as delicious the second time!

Adam was our attentive drink waiter- 

Noah (on roller skates) very carefully took down our orders- 

and Emma rocked the molten lava cakes for dessert.  She had never even seen me make these before but she followed the recipe and they were absolute perfection. 

There were no class Valentine parties this year, no exchanges of flowers or cards or chocolates at school, but we all still enjoyed the day of love!  Thanks to my sweetheart and my sweet babies, this was officially my very favorite Valentine's Day ever!