The Park and Valentine's Day

Wednesdays when the weather is nice we head out to the park with some of our church buddies. We live about 5 minutes away from this great huge park that no one goes to during the week. It was cool, so we bundled the kids up and headed out. It had rained the night before, so I brought a couple of towels out to dry off the slides they play on the most. Here's a shot of Aidan enjoying the newly dried off slide.
They played on this playground for a while, and everything was going great until they ventured onto another playset (did I mention it had rained the day before?) After about 5 minutes of play, I hear Dane wailing. A bit of explanation: Dane doesn't like getting super dirty/wet. There was the "soccer incident" when he fell into the mud on the field and started crying and his coach had to carry him off the field. Brandon was so proud. Here's a picture of Dane in the clothes we brought him to the park in:
The kids managed to find the 2 slides that I had not dried off, and they were soaking wet the first time they went down. Dane ended up with wet pants, socks, t-shirt, and sweatshirt, and insisted on taking it all off RIGHT NOW. While we were still at the park. The only "spare clothes" I had with me were a pair of sweat pants that were slightly snug on Aidan. So Dane wore Aidan's really-too-small sweatpants (think tight man-capris on a 4-year old), tennis shoes, and the knit cap. And that's all. He looked awesome. My apologies to the people in the parking lot who had to see us as we were loading up to go home. My kids usually don't look like that.

Yesterday, of course was Valentine's Day. Brandon and I kind of pride ourselves with not getting to caught up in this Hallmark Holiday. We laugh at the jewelry commercials, flower ads, and most of all, that Lexus commercial that shows the car with the big red bow on it. Because that's what I expect on Valentine's Day. A Lexus.

I worked a 12 hour shift in the ER yesterday, and all day long, flower guys brought in big, overpriced bouquets for my fellow nurses. (One girl did get one of those edible fruit-bouquets, which was pretty cool). One of my co-workers was even catching a flight to Las Vegas after work. I was not the least bit envious. I have a wonderful husband who shows me he loves me every day of the year, and I am very happy that he doesn't spend way too much money on Valentine's Day paraphenalia because the calender tells him to. (No offense to those of you who "do" Valentine's Day, we just don't).

I was about to walk out the door at work last night, when who do I see in the hallway but Brandon and 2 super cute little boys. The little boys were each holding a single rose. They had picked the roses out themselves on the way to suprise me, and Aidan's had seen better days (apparently he thought it was a nun-chuck and swung it around a few times in the parking lot). Dane had picked all the leaves off his. But I got the best flowers of the day. Mine had people attached to them. So we headed off to Double Dave's for some very romantic pizza and pepperoni rolls, and then went home. Happy Valentine's Day.