I asked all of you what you were doing for Valentine’s Day, so here’s how we celebrated.
Valentine’s Day turned into a week long celebration in our home. It began the Monday before when one of my gifts from my husband arrived by FedEx, a cutting from a plumeria plant from Hawaii. Hawaii is “our place”, a favorite vacation spot in our life before children. Plumeria is a popular flower there, and often used to make leis. Now I can have my own little piece of Hawaii here in Michigan.
Wednesday night my husband brought home a beautiful bouquet of flowers, each flower hand chosen and arranged by him. He did very well, don’t you think? He gave them to me the night before, he said, so I could enjoy them the entire Valentine’s Day, rather then just few hours in the evening. My gift for him also arrived Wednesday, a new cell phone with a lot more bells and whistles than his old one. Electronics, not food, are the real way to a man’s heart.
Usually one or both or us works, helping with the family business, on Valentine’s Day. I thought that would be the case this year as well, but to our surprise we didn’t have to work this year. I can’t remember the last time that happened. We didn’t find out soon enough to make plans though, so we spent a quiet evening at home with our son and I prepared a nice meal.
Saturday night my son went to stay at my parent’s house, and we finally got to go out on our Valentine’s date. I was very strange to actually be able to sit down in a restaurant and not admonish someone every five minutes to sit still, be quiet and eat. We got to stay at the restaurant until we finished eating instead of running out early before someone had a public melt down. The hours of uninterrupted conversation with each other were priceless. Every time we got in and out of the car we felt like we were forgetting something. No one to get in and out of a car seat. We got home at 9:30, and looked at each other and said,”Now what do we do?” We didn’t have to go through the half an hour bedtime ritual of teeth brushing, PJs, story, prayer and song. Don’t worry though. It didn’t take us long to remember what we used to do in our former life. 🙂