Saint Valentine

This year, Saint Valentine came in the form of my cousin, Emily.

Her boyfriend was in town visiting her and she graciously offered to watch Til-Meister so that Nate and I could go out for Valentines.

We hemmed and hawed for weeks on what we would do. The first rule was: We are NOT going to go to dinner. Why? Restaurants are crappy on Valentine's night. Pre-fixe menues. Crowded. Crappy service. And its generic. We wanted to do something 'different'.

BUT, at the same time we wanted to make sure whatever we did there was no way that Matilda could do it with us. Another good reason to not go out to eat. Technically, we could do this with Matilda--it just has to happen at like 4:30PM.

We talked about going to Spin and Yoga at The Firm.
Talked about going to the Ivy to work out and then sit in their hot tub.
We even explored going to Rollergarden. Seriously.

All in the quest to do something different.

The minutes ticked closer and closer to the big night. And still no plan.

We were putting all of this pressure on the night. That it had to be so mind-blowingly awesome that it was paralyzing to plan.

So what did we end doing?

We went out to eat.

Yup. Classic, right? AND, I couldn't help myself but to run and get a bunch of things picked up at Target.

But it was great. We got time out, together and we managed to not just talked about Matilda the whole night.

And we knew she was in good hands.

Although Matilda was not so sure about Emily's boyfriend, Joe. And she was afraid to show her...errr...discomfort...at the strange man in her bedroom.

"Hmmmm....maybe if I just peek around Emily this guy will be gone"

"Nope. He is still there. I shall give him the Matilda stare-down to see if I can scare him away"

"That didn't work either. Umm...Mama, can you do something about this?

It was so great to have a night away, but we were very happy to see our little Valentine the next day.