Valentine's Day recap

I'm a little slow, but I wanted to share our Valentine's day recap with you.

I'm not a huge fan of the holiday. 

Restaurants are always crowded

babysitters are expensive and hard to find

there is too much candy

roses are overrated 

and stuffed animals give me the creeps

We have a family tradition of celebrating the holiday together in a very simple way

I gave each of the kids their favorite candy and put it in a pretty package

I spent the week before planning our menu for our fancy family dinner.

While pasta wasn't on the menu for Valentine's day, the heart shaped pasta was too cute to pass up so we had it the night before

The younger two kids said their classmates really loved their Valentine's.
Nothing like a little lick 'em stick on the lips and teeth to show me what Owen was doing on the bus.

When I wasn't helping in the kids class on Valentine's day, I was cleaning up the house.

I wanted them all to feel like my special guests for the evening.

I followed this steakhouse recipe I found via pinterest from Amuse Bouche.
It was so good!

Isabella wanted to get in on the action and was our waitress for the evening.

Remember her skirt from two years ago?

It was such a fancy night that mama put on a dress!

We even got to eat in the dining room.

We have lived in our house for 14 months and this is the first time any of us has eaten in the dining room!

Our guests have eaten in there before, but us...nope.

We even lit candles 

(which I later regretted because my 6 year old blew wax all over the table...guess we aren't ready for dining room eating yet!)

We capped off dinner with chocolate fondue!

The kids were super excited for desert but after the wax incident, we moved desert into the kitchen table.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.

Check out the expression on my husbands face 

as he looks on at my 13 year old who has just shoved a whole marshmallow down his gullet!

It was the perfect evening with my perfect valentine's.I can't think of anyone else I would rather have spent it with!