.:a success indeed:.

so this year’s valentine’s day dinner was a success! the girls were absolutely thrilled and surprised. dave set it up to have me beat them home so i could get any last minute things set up and the dinner started. although i didn’t need to do as much as i thought because dave surprised me and had much of it done already! such a sweetheart. the girls first saw their cards and chocolate’s from my mom on the coffee table. when i told them it was from my mom they shouted “ah, she remembered us!” adorable. i then was surprised by lily and dave with a little present of my own. they surprised me with this wicked lightening bolt pin! i wore it very proudly on friday to work. that was a sweet, sweet surprise that i wasn’t expecting. i believe chloe spotted the kitchen table first and quickly hollered for her sisters to come check it out. now this whole time dave and i are frantically trying to find the camera, continue making dinner and get the girls settled. they spot their place cards, hair clips, cards, and the copious amounts of candy and sweets. as dave reads them their cards i add my special ingredient to the noodles and corn... a little red food coloring! at this point we have yet to find the camera. we tried to hold the girls off as long as we could while we searched high and low for a camera dave had seen earlier in the day. so i said, “forget the camera- let’s dig in!” and so it was... we enjoyed a delicious dinner (who knew that noodles, corn and strawberries could be so good?!) and ate some more sugar and decorated our Peeps (my personal favorite). we scattered from the table and dave and i stepped back to enjoy our successful dinner sans camera. i guess dave was a bit chilly because he went in our room to put his sweatshirt on and when he lifted it off the bed- what did he find?! THE CAMERA- after the table had been demolished, food eaten, Peeps devoured.

so, the important part of our whole evening was how much the girls enjoyed themselves and loved what dave and i had put together. we do have some photos for your enjoyment, but they definitely weren’t what i was thinking i’d be able to share. please enjoy.
dave and i had a very relaxing valentine’s weekend. we made almost no plans- intentionally. we knew we’d be taking my grams to church on sunday and had my ma’s valentine’s dinner that night. we kept friday and saturday unplanned, quiet and free to do whatever we wanted. we went to ikea and dreamt of what we could be doing to our place somewhere down the line... we went to the new kent station to walk around and see where the new hockey rink is. we got home early in the night and decided we would love to go out dancing if we could find some place free.... dave put his mits to work and found that the muckleshoot casino had the romantics playing saturday night! (i hope you’re all laughing to yourselves by now...) we got dolled up and hit the road. this place was packed! first time i had been to a casino that wasn’t in vegas! the show was cute, we caught a couple songs and headed to the smoke-free section of the casino; which just so happened to have a sweet shop in the back corner. HUGE ice cream cones for two and a half bucks. uh-mazing. it was entertaining to say the very least.
we had a great sunday too. church with grams was great as always. she even treated us to lunch afterwards! there is this great place called spuds close to my mom’s house. one of my grams’ favorites and something grams and i used to do a couple years ago after church. they have amazing tarter sauce. we dropped grams off at home, went grocery shopping for her and then hung out at my ma’s for the afternoon. we played cards with ma, carl and eric. ma had a few little gifts for dave and i. dinner was at 5 and it was delish! ma did three (wait, maybe four?) different pasta sauces, caesar salad and great bread- with cheesecake for dessert! chris, marc, esther, ryan and rowan were all there too. a great family time for all.
i’ll wrap up here. our weekend was great, and our valentine’s dinner was pretty amazing.

happy middle of february.