V-Day 2011

Normally, Valentine's Day doesn't go to well for us. One year when we were newlyweds in Logan, we decided to go out to eat on Valentine's Day at Wingers. I had called ahead to make reservations, but the person on the phone told me I wouldn't need them and wouldn't make them for me. When we showed up, we ended up waiting at least a hour for our table.

Our first Valentine's Day in Syracuse also was a disaster. I was about 3 months pregnant with Cooper and we still hadn't learned our lesson about eating out on Valentine's Day so we were heading to Iggy's. On the way there, we had to pass a car accident, but police were waving people through, despite not having the mess completely cleared. As we passed through, we heard a pop and on arriving at Iggy's noticed we now had a flat tire due to all the glass in the street. Dan spent over an hour trying to fix it (including breaking 2 jacks) and I spent over an hour trying to get a table. By the time we got to eat I was so sick nothing stayed down anyway...it was awesome.

Since then, we've learned to keep Valentine's Day pretty low key by making our own "romantic" dinner at home. We also try to make it special for our kids. If you haven't heard by now, our son is obsessed with monsters, especially one-eyed monsters, all of which are named Mike from the movie Monsters Inc. My mom found this hideous valentine's monster and had to send it to him. He also loves mail so it was an amazing day for him. The night before Valentine's day we webcammed with the grandparents so they could see his reaction...it went something along the lines of this:

Cooper, upon seeing us bring the box out of the closet: "Yay! New box!" (followed by clapping)
Cooper: "A giant Mike monster! Ahh..." (followed by immense hugging and not letting "Mike" out of his sight. Then, we had to open the "mail" or his card from grandma and grandpa...My parents sent Bailey a cute little outfit and us some chocolate, most of which Cooper has eaten. It was a good pre-Valentine's day. By the way, "Mike" goes everywhere with us...not too sure if I'm a fan of "Mike."