Happy Valentine's Day!

I am not a fan of Valentine's Day as it often is celebrated. I think it ostracizes single people and puts show over substance. You want to show me you love me? Leave the flowers at the store, forget the grand gesture, and empty the trash every day. Because flowers wilt and die within the week, but the trash needs emptying forever (I actually am just using that as an example. Jason is happy to empty the trash, but that is a chore that I also don't mind doing myself). So before we had kids, we didn't really celebrate Valentine's Day much because I have a bad attitude about it. After kids, we still don't celebrate it much as a couple. But one of my core parental values is to celebrate minor holidays and I can get behind a holiday celebrating love and kindness, which is more what Valentine's Day is for small children. So we do celebrate it now as a family. We started our celebrating with festive lunch and fun shirts for the kids. We had tomato soup and heart-shaped sandwiches with cherry 7-up floats.

Next we did small gifts. Clara got a Chelsea doll (which is Barbie's sister, similar to how Kelley used to be, but they don't make Kelley anymore), Joshua got a transformer, and Hannah also got a small doll and then each kid also got a book and some conversation hearts. 

Then for dinner we had pizza with a heart in the middle, salad with pink dressing and bubble gum ice cream for dessert. The ice cream turned out really well. The recipe I used called for melting actual bubble gum to flavor the base. I think I might use bubble gum extract next time because it was a little messy. But it was so good that I am also hesitant to change it up. Then I used gumballs as add-ins. When I was little, sometimes we would go to a restaurant called Swensen's after church for lunch. It was a restaurant/ice cream shop and I really loved their bubblegum ice cream. Because you eat your ice cream and then you get to eat all the gumballs. It's a double dessert. Does it get more awesome? No, it does not and it's festively pink for Valentine's Day. The kids really enjoyed it, as did Jason and I. Clara wasn't convinced that she should save the gum to the end though, and tried to eat both at once, resulting in this weird facial expressions. It was a fun day that we all enjoyed.