Valentine’s Day

We don’t really do valentines.  I kind of think that it’s really a holiday for married folk 🙂  Our homeschool group does an exchange and we always just write, “Thanks for being my friend” on our valentines. None of that silly, “Be mine” or “You’re my sweetheart” you find on some valentines.

With all that being said, Valentine’s Day is a BIG deal around here. Every year, we do a surprise Valentine’s Day Dinner for our parents. It’s not usually on Valentine’s Day because of the time we need for it, so it’s on the Saturday closest. This year it’s Feb. 16.

We plan this all year long and every year has a different, surprise theme. We’ve done Fancy Restaurant,  Chinese, Hawaiian, American Retro Diner, French.  This is our sixth year doing this!

Some Highlights of the past:

Fancy: Our first year!  Banana splits for dessert! Now that I think of it- that’s really not fancy at all.

Chinese: We made paper lanterns out of construction paper and hung big Christmas lights on the ceiling and put the lanterns over them. Awesome.

Hawaiian:  We all wore floral and I found a free, online Hawaiian radio station to play music for it.  We also got a coconut for decoration but when we opened it- it smelled AWFUL!

Retro Diner: We painted a box to look like a juke box and created a CD of oldies love songs. They got to pick songs to play from a list.

French: We made ratatouille from the movie and it was delicious and beautiful!

This year: Still a secret! We’ve had the theme picked out since summer and it is our most involved one yet.  I can’t say any more because my intelligent mother might deduce what we’re doing.

That Saturday, Mom and Dad already know they usually have to leave mid-morning and we tell them what time they are allowed to come home. It’s usually about 5PM, although the Diner year we did do it for lunch. This year will be the usual- dinner.

We really try to include everyone in the preparation. Bethany knows it’s always been her job to greet them at the door and help take their coats. David has a job to do but he usually ends up sitting with Mom and Dad to get food off of them!  Rebecca has a big job this year and we all help with food.

It’s a lot of work but we all love it and can’t wait!