Happy Valentine's Day

Every holiday I try to get the kids a little something as a gift to celebrate. After a couple years of throwing away little gimmicky toys and candy I have decided to only get them gifts I know they are going to use. This year we got them bean bags. Cole already has a baseball one so I got Kadee and Chance each one so there would be no fighting. Since Cole already has one I got him a skateboard. Kadee got one for Christmas and he loves the thing. He already knows how to flip the front up! The kids were awfully surprised when they came downstairs in the morning.
That afternoon my mom came over so the kids could help her decorate the heart shaped sugar cookies she made for Valentine's day. Kadee loves to help her ice and decorate them and Cole is totally loving it now too!

Unfortunately, I think Chance got too much fresh air fishing the day before and was up all night coughing, and coughed pretty much all day long. We canceled our plans for Valentine's dinner and instead decided to cook something ourselves. All of the stores had fantastic sales on steaks and crab legs so we indulged ourselves. It was Valentine's Day!

It was not the most romantic Valentine's Day I have had with a sick baby and all but boy did I count my blessings to still have the same Valentine I had 18 years ago! I don't care how we spend the day, as long as it is together!

YUMMY!

For Valentine's Day this year we decided our present would be a night out to dinner at one of our favorite places...The Melting Pot. My sister ever so graciously watched Kadee and Cole for us and on Sunday night we made our way over to the restaurant.

If you have never been to the Melting Pot I highly recommend it. It is so yummy and actually very relaxing, even though you do most of the cooking yourself. We always order the "Big Night Out", one because it usually is a Big Night Out for us and two because it seems to be the biggest bang for the buck. I was even pretty excited because we waited to go on Sunday we were able to use our $20 coupon from the Entertainment Book...what a deal.

Anyways, back to the best part...the food! It starts out with cheese fondue. This time we picked the Spinach and Artichoke fondue which was out of this world. They served it with cold veggies, apples and a variety of bread for our dunking pleasure. After that we each got to pick a salad which was pretty darn good also. Then came the main course...Lobster Tail, Filet Mignon, Pork, Chicken, Shrimp, Salmon and Spinach and Cheese Ravioli. They bring out a big side of veggies to cook in the pot as well as several delicious sauces to use on the different meats. It was DELICIOUS!
Then my absolute favorite part of the meal...dessert! We chose the SMORES chocolate fondue which was chocolate, marshmallow cream and graham crackers. They served cheesecake, brownies, pound cake, rice crispy treats, bananas, strawberries, graham crackers and my ultimate favorite marshmallows dipped in chocolate cookie crumbs and graham crackers.

It was a delicious meal but the best part was being able to spend some quality time with my honey! He is a keeper and I love him to death! We had a great night and talked and talked and talked the entire night about everything and anything. Happy Valentine's Day Charlie, I had a fantastic time!

Hold On Tight!

For Valentine's Day this year I wanted to get the kids something they could really use instead of more candy and another stuffed animal that would just end up collecting dust. So the procrastinator that I am hit Target on Friday night after the kiddos went to bed. I think I walked all of the aisles twice until something really cool caught my eye...a tree swing! Yep, that would be perfect for them.

I came home and wrapped it up and let them open it first thing Valentine's Day morning. Kadence was soooo excited that she couldn't stop asking her Daddy to put it up. That afternoon, Charlie climbed up the ladder and tied it up to the tree. The kids love it! Kadee has totally gotten the hang of it and will run and jump on and has even tried standing on it a time or two. Cole-man is hilarious to watch on it. He holds on for dear life and eventually loses his balance and falls off one side only to beg to get back on. This little do-hickey provided us with hours of free entertainment this weekend. I am glad I was able to find something fun and practical!

Homeade Valentine's Day Card

Kadence made me and Charlie the cutest Valentine's Day card in school. She was so excited to give it to us I think mainly because she made it herself. I love homemade cards and gifts, if only I had time to make them!

Hers was super cute. She informed me and Charlie that the silver Hershey Kisses were for Charlie and the red were for me because my favorite color is red.

Valentine's Day Cards

Kadee made out her own Valentine's Day cards...27 of them for her class. She decided to give the kids High School Musical cards attached to a packet of Fun Dip (you know the packets of colored sugar you eat with a stick made out of pure sugar...yeah her classmates mommy's and daddy's are going to LOVE us!)

Valentine's Brownies

I stayed home with Cole on Thursday, we found out he had severe Bronchitis and a double ear infection...lovely and lots of fun :) I was starting to get a sore throat and wasn't feeling all that great either. We took Kadee to school and picked her up at the end of the day where I was given a wonderful report from her teacher. Kadence has recently has some problems socializing in class and not paying attention to the teacher. We have had several long conversations with her and the teacher thanked me very much for our efforts because whatever we were doing was working. What a relief. On top of that, she has been given a list of words to learn every week. On Thursdays, the teacher tests each kid and those who have learned their words get to move on. This week she struggled a little bit so I thought she might have a hard time with her test, but she didn't she passed with flying colors.

I thought she deserved some quality mommy and me time so I put Cole down for a nap (that's a whole other story...for two hours he laid in his bed with the occasional "MOMMY!" screamed at the top of his lungs! I wasn't going to cave in, he needed his sleep. I kept peeking in on him to make sure he was okay and on my last peek saw that he pulled his TV/DVD combo into his bed and pulled out the DVD player that is on the side of the TV! No more DVD's for Cole!)

Anyways, me and Kadee decided we would bake brownies...yum. We spent the afternoon chatting it up, mixing brownies which Kadence did all by herself and just enjoying time together. We had a blast and best of all got to have some delicious brownies to top off our afternoon.