Troy and I have never been big on celebrating Valentine’s Day. I’ve always forbidden him to spend $50 on roses that would cost $15 on any other day, and we tend to avoid going out to eat because restaurants are always so busy and crowded. Before Annalie was born we might have gone out to an early or late movie, and we’d usually exchange small gifts (a Reese’s Peanut Butter Heart, a CD, a t-shirt) but that was pretty much it. Neither of us harbored expectations of or desires for elaborate romantic candlelit dates.

We still exchange small gifts with each other, but now we also get presents for Annalie. Um, that’s pretty much the entire difference in how we celebrate Valentine’s Day since our kid was born. Also, I guess if we go to a movie now it’s usually an animated one that’s rated G.

Hey, look at that—we gave Annalie Madagascar 2 for Valentine’s Day. We fused the old with the new there. Or something.

And then Sonja and Elaine came over with their kids for lunch!

Last month, Sonja and I were emailing back and forth trying to figure out a day when we were both free so she could come down here and paint pottery. Of course the days she was free were days I was busy and vice-versa. It was looking like we weren’t going to get together till mid-March when I asked if she and her husband usually had big Valentine’s Day plans. Her response was something along the lines of, “Not at ALL!” which earned her an invitation to lunch and pottery-painting.

Then a couple of days ago it occurred to met that Elaine knows Sonja too. I’ve been so bad about keeping up with my new local friends, what with the traveling and the sicknesses and the holidays, they’re all going to start thinking I don’t like them. I jumped at the chance to include Elaine and her girls. Later I found out that Sonja and Elaine hadn’t seen each other in two years, which means Elaine hadn’t even met Noah yet! I wish I’d been more on the ball and had invited Bonnie and her crew as well. Ah well, another time.

About 15 minutes before everyone was supposed to arrive, I talked to Elaine. She was at home sharpening crayons to get the shavings to use for a craft later that day, and wasn’t sure when she would be heading out the door. I told her to bring the crayons over here, that we’d help her out and she’d have someone to talk to while she worked. Because that is how we roll. We pretty much expect visitors to bring their dirty laundry or projects that need finishing when they come over.

If nothing else, it gives us something to take pictures of. We bloggers are a funny lot, aren’t we? Troy was laughing at the three of us with our cameras, photographing Noah, the crayon shavings, each other photographing the crayon shavings, etc.

Be honest, now. Would you have been able to resist taking photos of this mess? It’s so colorful and pretty! When Troy saw what we were doing he rolled his eyes at me (justifiably, I was kind of an idiot) because I didn’t think about crayon shavings getting ground into the carpet. Luckily everything vacuumed right up.

Once Anya and Lily remembered Annalie and got comfortable at our house, they had fun taking turns rolling around the living room in the blue tube. All the kids helped peel the crayons for a while, and they spent some time coloring with markers. Considering Annalie is sick (and therefore not her normal easygoing self) and that the three of them hadn’t seen each other in nearly six months, I think they did pretty well.

As for me, seeing Sonja and Elaine again made me wonder why I waited so long to make plans with them again, because they’re both so smart and funny and easy to talk to. People like that shouldn’t be taken for granted!

After lunch Elaine and her girls had to run, and Sonja and I headed to the mall with Noah for some pottery-painting. That, however, was a great big FAIL. It never even occurred to me that painting pottery would be a Valentine’s thing to do. When we got to the studio it was packed, and the tables all had little “reserved” signs on them. I felt so bad! Sonja had driven all the way here to paint, and we weren’t going to be able to paint! Ack! But one of the reasons I like Sonja is that she’s very laid-back. If she was upset, she hid it extremely well and just mentioned that she needed to run to Barnes & Noble anyway, if I didn’t mind.

Then I made a casual comment about the fact that the Target at our mall has two levels, and Sonja practically did a happy dance. I guess the Target where she normally shops is a lot smaller. And I’ll admit, our Target is pretty cool. We had fun browsing the aisles, but Noah was too interested in what was going on to conk out and take a nap. That was our cue to go home.

Noah finally did fall asleep in the car, so before Sonja left she came inside for just a couple of minutes to give Annalie a little present, a handmade apron and a matching doll apron! If that wasn’t cool enough, she also gave me a similar apron, which was incredibly sweet of her. Thanks again, Sonja! I know the aprons will get lots of use.

In fact, Annalie wore her apron to dinner last night! We figured an early dinner at a local Chinese restaurant was pretty safe, as it’s not the kind of place where people would probably go for a romantic Valentine’s Day dinner. And it wasn’t very busy but MAN was the service slow. Once the waitress took our order, we waited another 45 minutes before our food was ready. Trust me, we didn’t order anything spectacular enough to take that long to prepare. While we speculated that maybe they were short a cook or something, we took photos to pass the time.

After we got home from dinner and while Troy was putting Annalie to bed, I made a Vanilla Bean Angel Food Cake. That was my gift to Troy, since he loves angel food cake. Most of you are probably shaking your head at me right now and wondering why I bother making angel food cake from scratch when you can make a perfectly good one with a box mix, right? All I can say is, I thought the same thing till the first time I went to the trouble of actually separating the whites out of 12 eggs, beating them silly, adding the sugar two tablespoons at at time, etc. It sounds like a lot of work, but OH MY GOODNESS is it ever worth it. And if you have a stand mixer the beating part is a cinch. If anyone ever offers to make you an angel food cake from scratch you should take them up on it, trust me.

Of course, you might want to be there while they do it so you can pay attention to the cooking time. I accidentally let the cake cook for 30 minutes longer than I was supposed to. I was so mad at myself, thinking it would be burned to a crisp. Weirdly, though, the cake was fine! The crust is a bit more brown than it should be and it tastes ever so slightly singed around the edges. That hasn’t stopped us from eating two-thirds of the cake in the past day though. Maybe I’ll just head down to the kitchen and see about having another slice right now…

I hope you all had a lovely Valentine’s Day! Or at least that your meal was delivered to your table promptly and that you didn’t burn your cake.