Happy Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day has never been a holiday that Cory and I have completely embraced. Cory says that it's a just a conspiracy between the card, flower, and candy companies to make a lot of money. I have to partially agree with him. I've never been a huge fan of receiving flowers. I hate spending that much money on something that is going to die in a few days.

I do, however, enjoy using Valentine's Day as an excuse to go out to a nice dinner (especially now that we have kids and date nights are not as frequent as they used to be!) So when Cory came home a few weeks ago and told me he had to work ALL of Valentine's Day weekend helping move and set up the new eye clinic in Midlothian, I was a little bummed. Or maybe I was a lot bummed. And angry. I couldn't understand why he couldn't get away for just a few hours and take me out to dinner. After several heated discussions and maybe a little bit of silent treatment finally coming to his senses, Cory realized how important it was to me and made reservations at a great steakhouse. We were able to go last night and enjoy spending some quality time together.

Parker and Eden are still a little bit too young to understand holidays and what they mean, but I wanted to do a few things to make this weekend fun. Yesterday, we started the day with pink Valentine pancakes. They were much more pink than I had expected, and I was a little worried about how they were going to taste, but they were actually quite good. Parker, of course, would not try them and Eden, as usual, ate every bite of hers (and maybe some of Parker's too!).


This morning, Cory did not have to be at work as early as he had originally thought, so he wanted to take the kids to McDonald's for a Valentine's Day breakfast. I had already volunteered to work in the nursery at church, so we decided to take them to lunch instead.
After the kids woke up from nap, we drove over to have Valentine's dinner with Emily, Addison and Aubrey. On our way, we stopped by the new eye clinic in Midlothian to see Cory. The new clinic opens tomorrow and it is absolutely incredible! I am so excited for all of the staff and hope they have a great first day tomorrow.

We tried to get a good picture of all 4 kids in their cute Valentine outfits but, as usual, it was impossible to get a decent picture of all of them. One of them is always either not looking, crying because they don't want to be in the picture, squirming, or just getting up and walking/crawling away. Ugh!! Please tell me that it will get easier to capture their sweet little smiles on camera as they get older!Here is Eden's cute shirt. I would totally kiss and hug her all day if she would let me!

What could have been a not-so-great Valentine's Day weekend actually turned out to be quite memorable. I got to spend time with lots of the people that I love and hopefully showed them how much I love them.

I am so blessed that God has given me a wonderful husband who loves me even when I'm being difficult and unlovable. I also have two incredible kids who have taught me how to love in a way that I never knew possible.

Happy Valentine's Day to all of you and those you love!!