Today is Valentine’s Day.  The day of celebrating love.  Depending on how you look at it, Valentine’s Day can be any number of things to people.  For me its always represented celebrating any form of love: significant other, parent, sibling, child, friend, classmate and more.  I don’t think a day to remind us of the love we have in our life is a bad thing; it’s an opportunity to be grateful and a reminder to love well!

For me today has been a wonderful day of love!  Was it special dinner plans, an extravagant gift or beautiful flowers that made it special?  Though all those are nice, no that’s not what made this Valentine wonderful.  This year was, I would even dare say, extra special, because it was just a quite, low key, have fun as we go day with my little family!

Rose and I slept in till about 8:30 and awoke to the huzband getting in a morning run and little V playing some Xbox (she got to rent a game as a special treat last night from Blockbuster – yup, we still have one in Alaska).  I made us breakfast, which included bacon (we love bacon) and exchanged a few small gifts.  I gave Velda a book entitled The Book with No Pictures by B.J. Novak (he is a writer, amongst other things, from the tv show The Office).  It’s a seriously goofy book and I look forward to reading it over and over.

While everyone else was busy after breakfast, I spent some moments alone in the kitchen, snuggling Rose, relishing in the quietness and finishing my Valentine coffee the huzband had brought me home.  It was peaceful and soul filling as the sun shone through the window and this little girl quietly slept on my chest.

a sweet friend gifted Rose with this adorable Love Day outfit

Once we were all cleaned up, we decided to head out for some Starbucks and a trip into the mountains.  Of course, we had to drop off a few Valentine’s for some special friends of little V’s.

Side note: though I still call her little V, I look at this picture and am reminded she is not so little anymore!  (Insert momma tears!)  Once we popped in for a short visit and Valentine swap, we headed towards the green woman (Starbucks).

Our family received a surprise Valentine treat in the Starbucks drive thru.  When we pulled up to the window, the barista informed us that the customer ahead of us had paid for our order and said to wish us a Happy Valentine’s Day!   This was the first time this sort of thing has happened to me and can I say, it truly is a heart warming gift.  The huzband and I were touched by this strangers kindness that we wanted to, you guessed it, ‘pay it forward’, so we paid for the customer behind us in line!  I wonder how long that went on in the drive thru line!

Once we had our order, we headed for Hatcher’s.  As we pulled up to a light, we noticed the car next to us was the same car that was in front of us in the Starbucks drive thru (it was a hard to miss bright green.)  I rolled down my window, held up my coffee (yes my second of the day – hey, it’s a holiday!) and once the huzband got her attention by honking, I said thank you!  You could tell it surprised her too but isn’t it nice to sometimes receive a thank you?!  I’m glad we could thank her!

The huzband got this hover craft thing for work which is why we headed up to Hatcher’s.  He wanted to test it out up there and I love going up there anytime I can.  It’s beautiful being in the mountains and is a reminder to me of what an amazing place I live in!  Once we were all good and chilly (and the battery had run out), we piled back in the car and headed home.

We arrived home around 5 and that afternoon/early evening lull hit me full force.  I was tired!  While V was occupying herself, I crawled under my covers and watched, with the huzband, the video he had just taken up at Hatcher’s.  I debated cooking dinner but since grilled salmon was on the menu for the night, I figured with the huzband grilling we could get it together.  I took a blissfully wonderful 20 minute nap before getting dinner ready.

We had a picnic dinner in our living room and popped on the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie.  Once dinner was over, we all snuggled on the couch and may or may not have had some chocolates that my dad had sent us.

Once that movie was over, the huzband tucked V in bed, I fed Rose and we reconviened on the couch for another movie for the two of us.  Perhaps a few more chocolates (or Corn Nuts in the huzband’s case) were eaten, a few baby cries interrupted and a few laughs were had to end our Valentine’s Day of 2015.

So there you have it, nothing overly exciting but just exactly what this family needed.  You see, this is the last full family day we will get for a month.  The huzband has to work the next two Saturday’s and then will head to Asia for two weeks, therefore it’ll be a month till we have another day like today.  So I savored today a little more than usual.  I wanted to write it down in the history books (blog) to look back on the ordinarily wonderful family day.

I wouldn’t want to spend Valentine’s any other way than with the three people that fill my world with an undeniably amazing love!