Pre-Valentine Party and Post-Valentine Date

For weeks and weeks, the girls worked on a Valentine surprise for their brothers--they got their Grandma on-board and she contributed a bag full of goodies and prizes. They made decorations in their room for days on end, then spent another several days putting the decorations in place downstairs (the basement was OFF LIMITS to the boys for a week! :) They went shopping with me and purchased balloons and gifts for their brothers from their own allowance, love that!

They made up games, they built a scavenger hunt, they wrote a play (complete with costumes) . . . I cannot believe how much time and effort they put into this event! So of course, they couldn't wait until Valentine's Day to share the fun with their brothers :)

Talk about excitement! The boys were amazed at the transformation downstairs, and came out of the deal with a bag full of prizes that would envy a town parade. They were truly thankful for their sisters' efforts and played the games, watched the play, collected their gifts, and remarked how nice it was that the girls had done this for them (we will just ignore the part where they haphazardly tore down all the handmade decorations blocking the TV so they could play Wii a few days later; sisters weren't so happy about that . . . :)

While cleaning out our key box, Buck discovered an unused restaurant gift card . . . we decided to pair this with the movie tickets we "won" at his company's holiday party, and boom, free date! (well other than the sitter :) We set out in the mid-afternoon on the Saturday following Valentine's Day and rolled in the new car (seriously, even the kid helping me load groceries at the store couldn't stop talking about how cool the car is :) to lunch. We decided on the way that we would save the movie tickets for the movie date we'd promised the kids for their next chore chart team goal (and we went to see Escape from Planet Earth the next Monday, it was really pretty cute! they all loved it, and there were not really many questionable scenes/themes for their age-range). So, then what to do with a free afternoon?

As it turns out, we were pretty close to a mall that I've not been to since college . . . so we decided to check it out. Good gravy Marie! With President's Day on the horizon, it was like the whole place was on sale! We didn't intend to shop, necessarily, but at the shoe store (where there was an employee so super, Buck wanted to steal him :) we bought three pairs of shoes and a hat for $27! The Children's Place was ridiculous--jeans for under $8, pjs for $3.50 (the cotton kind that Graysen can wear!)

It was fun just to hang out together and to find little surprises hidden here and there. We were even home in time to put the kids to bed, so it ended up being a very nice, relaxing day (not to mention we'd cleaned/fixed stuff around the house all morning, so it also felt like a day of accomplishments! He should take Saturdays off more often :)