Valentine's Day, Bear Style

Bear and I have had plenty of date nights lately, thanks to lots of Monday holidays in January-February (when it's a 4-day week, my partner and I split it right down the middle, and that means Bear and I have Wednesday off together)...so this Valentine's Day, we decided to just celebrate with the girls. We still exchanged our traditional gifts, though: he got me a (totally sweet) card and pretty (purple) flowers, and I got him a card and baked him a pan of brownies. We keep it simple, which I love!

I made heart-shaped pancakes for breakfast (which I dyed pink but came out just looking kind of diseased once they were cooked), and the girls got little heart-shaped bucket of gifts from Bear and me--each one had $1 sunglasses, little boxes of Jelly Bellies, chocolate lollipops from See's Candy, and a new Fancy Nancy paperback inside. I love that they're still thrilled by stuff like that! Then, Keira packed up her valentines to take to preschool. Here's a pic of her taping lollipops to each one last night:


I'm not a fan of store-bought valentines, but hand-making 22 personalized ones is not something Keira (or I) would ever have the patience for...so, for the past two years, we've compromised. I give her a quarter-sheet of paper, she designs her card and signs it, I scan it into the computer, and we print them out and cut 'em up. I think they came out really cute!


My partner got to host our class' party and deal with the sugared-up students all day, so I was glad to be able to drop by and at least contribute something: little gifts for our parent volunteers. Bear and I happened to find these packages of gourmet popcorn at Costco, 12 for $9.99, the other day, so I printed up little labels and stuck 'em on. (Since both of our last names start with M, my partner and I call ourselves M&M.)


Unlike my future sister-in-law, the chef, who made a totally impressive dinner for my very lucky brother tonight, I didn't make a fancy meal...but I did go for somewhat of a Valentiney theme. We had what Bear has taken to calling "kisses," which is a totally easy recipe my grandma always made when I was a kid: you just lay out sheets of aluminum foil, put a slice of onion on each one, put a hamburger patty on top, salt and pepper it, and add chopped potatoes on top. Sprinkle on some more salt and pepper, wrap it up like a big Hershey's Kiss, and bake it.




Elegant? Not really. (Dude. There were plastic plates, no table cloth--we don't even own a decent one--and a bottle of ketchup involved.) But the girls had a BLAST drinking sparkling cider out of their little plastic "wine glasses" and making toasts to everything: Mommy, Daddy, sisters, friendship, brownies...


Ellie couldn't remember what a "toast" was called and asked me to "do a twitch" with her, which cracked us up!

It was a pretty low-key day--no diamonds, no cocktail dresses, no shirts and ties, no shrimp or lobster...not even goodie bags or cute Pinterest projects for my students or Keira's classmates (though I won't say I wasn't tempted). Our house was full of love and calories today, and that was about all we needed!

Happy Valentine's Day!