The best Valentine's Day

A package came in the mail a few weeks ago, for Darla and me. It was from the queen of party-throwing, my childhood friend Jayena. (She throws sophisticated, stunning, personal parties for people. I remember she had a knack for it in the 8th grade when it was about a good sized sheet cake and the cutest boys. On a slumber party scale she was always off the charts.)

Jayena heard that Darla is herself quite the party planner- so she sent a party in a box for us. We waited until Valentine's Day to pull it all out and throw the best party for our boys. Darla and I handled all the decorating while Hudson and Sean made dinner for us (Everett ran back and forth between the rooms, blanket in tow.)

It was beautiful and our kids were so proud of their contributions. Darla decided we should get "all fanced up" which meant finding her Christmas dress and looking in my closet until she found something matching (slightly embarrassing- a dress I wore to Whitworth's winter formal 11 years ago). She asked for blue eye s

hadow and perfume. Hudson put on a collared shirt and requested cologne.

So there we all sat for a dinner where the kids didn't want to escape to play immediately. They soaked it up with fairly good manners, talking like grown ups. After dinner was over we built ice cream sundaes and gave the kids a bubble bath. We ended our evening with "Berenstain Bears Valentine".

When we tucked the last little Taylor in, S. and I were grinning. Somehow even though we didn't have a quiet Valentine's (at one point Darla was taking pictures, Everett was screaming, and Hudson fell and hit his head), we didn't have a get-away Valentine (there was no escaping all of us being together!) and we didn't have a "romantic" dinner (our candle light almost gave Hudson burns when he prematurely blew them out)... we agreed that it was the best Valentine's Day we've ever spent together. We felt loved and so did our kids. Bonus: they were in bed by 7:30pm and we had the evening to ourselves after all!

This morning the kids stumbled out of bed and asked "Is Va

lentine's really over? Can we just pretend it's Valentine's Day every day?"