Valentine Lovin'

Valentine's Day! You either hate it or you love it. You either feel it or you don't. I am usually into feeling it but after hearing my husband complain year after year of how overdone and materialized it is... I tend to lose my inspiration. This year, just days before Valentine's Day, Cyril starts to complain that there is 'soooo much pressure' on Valentine's Day, there is just not enough time, and he just isn't coming up with anything 'good'. I try to keep my cool but inside he has really hit a nerve! I simply tell him that the only 'pressure' surrounding Valentine's Day is the 'pressure' that he puts on himself, and it's not like this is the first EVER Valentine's Day. I mean it is clearly stated exactly 2 weeks into February on every calendar ever printed! Please don't try to say that this day has 'snuck up' on you. So, I say, you can either figure out a way to tell me how wonderful I am or don't bother; but what you can't say is that you didn't have time, or money, or lack of ideas, or blah, blah, blah. Like I said-- you either feel it or you don't.

I should start out by saying that I have never been the kind of wife that expects (overpriced)flowers and chocolates and fancy dinners and all the frills and stuff. I think one of the best things that Cyril has done for me on V-Day is write little messages on post-it notes and put them all over the house for me to find after he had left for work. Note: I was pregnant with Alex.... first born... over 6 years ago!
In Cyrils' defence I must say that he does buy me flowers when I am sick, or before my first triathalon, or for no reason what-so-ever. I can't make him out to be totally unromantic and cold. He really does show his love and commitment to me in other ways... but Valentine's Day is his chance to just lay it all out there!



Soooo...... I hear Cyril wake up with the kids sometime around 7:30 on Saturday morning so I naturally roll over in hopes to catch a few more zzzz's. Then just after 9 am my lovely family wakes me quietly and pass me the menu featuring the Valentine's Day breakfast items for me to check off. Then they all leave and tell me to stay in bed and they would return in a half hour. They all file in after working hard to make my breakfast together, the kids were just so excited to do this for me and Cyril had a big happy smile on his face. This is what it is all about!! We took the kids swimming that afternoon and I made Alex his favorite supper, shrimp stir fry. Cyril wanted to have a chocolate fondue with me after the kids went to bed but we decided to introduce the kids to fondue..... they loved it!!! What a great Valentine's Day!!