Ballingtymes

I have the BEST valentine.

My valentine and I share a very hectic life right now. We have much going on in  our own little family, and much extracurricular stuff that weighs heavily on us. Work, part-time work, and school are crazy for me, and Steve is expanding his personal practice and balancing all that he does with the EAP, family, church, etc. There is no 'extra' time.

So....when my very long work day ended on Valentine's Day, and I pulled into my driveway, much to my surprise and delight my headlights found this:

This picture doesn't do it justice, because it's just my headlights, and it's the ugly "under deck" space; but there was a balloon and two cute little spikey valentiney things to greet me.

I could also smell the grill on the deck, the familiar aroma of STEAK. Yummmm...

When my tired body got to the top of the stairs, with my arms full of all my stuff, the back door opened automatically by a cute junior valentine, and the other junior valentine took my stuff from me and escorted me to my chair, which he pulled out for me at the table.

                                                   

I was immediately seated at beautiful table with a red tablecloth, a dozen roses, cute little place cards for everyone (courtesy of Colton & Rogan), and hearts hanging from the light fixture.

We all enjoyed a TASTY, healthy dinner consisting of a salad with all kinds of my favorite ingredients, including lots of thinly sliced avocado on top, delicious fresh veggies, perfectly seasoned T-BONE steak (so tender and succulent), a bit of rice and my favorite 7-grain bread.

The house was filled with pink valentine balloons. After dinner we went into the living room and everyone opened presents. Junior valentines got a couple of cool little things this morning before school, and then another fun gift tonight.

Later we had STRAWBERRY PIE...so valentiney!

Besides the fact that my schweetie constantly helps with everything around the house...(yes, ladies, he's done that for almost 30 years, and I DO NOT take it for granted!) the fact that he spent 'extra' time that we don't have right now, and cleaned up the house, decorated, cooked a fabulous meal, wrapped presents with far more care and creativity than the gift bags I use...and put so much thought into everything he did FOR ME -- (and so many more reasons that I won't go into now) make me the luckiest girl ever.

I LOVE MY VALENTINE!

(OH...and he gave me a laptop.)