Our Day of Love

Valentine's Day is one of our favorites at the Smith house.  We have been celebrating the same tradition for the past 10 years or so.  We celebrate Valentine's Day at home with the hooligans.  It starts with candlelight dinner.  It's always pork chops and rice because it's their very favorite.  We did stray away from the original dinner on one instance because of the hectic day, but other than that it's always been pork chops and rice.  Last year the girls wanted to participate more, so they made up menus and table decorations.  We saved them for use again this year.  Pulling them out of the sack made me smile.  I had forgotten how hard they worked on all the details.  The table was beautiful once again this year when they were done decorating.  Anyway, back to our tradition.  We eat our lovely dinner after the girls act as waitresses, take our individual orders, and then happily serve us. They even broke out the shiny silver trays for this part this year.  We drink our favorite bubbly drinks in champagne glasses which we all clink together, and we talk about what happened during our Valentine day.  Once dinner is complete dessert is served.  Although dinner is always a constant as far as content goes, dessert is not.  This year we had chocolate covered strawberries that Grandma Rue hand-dipped for us.  They were delicious.  After dessert our party moves downstairs.  We all find our way to the soft sounds of Kenny G and Celine Dion which of course have been playing throughout our meal and we dance.  The girls take turns dancing with their dad, and I dance with my little man.  This year the dance floor was decorated with balloons thanks to Doop.  He just could not wait for the evening to arrive.  Of course the slow dancing turned into a faster pace when we kicked things up a notch with our favorite '80's tunes.  I don't think I would have changed a thing from this day.  It was fabulous!