Our Valentine's Day Celebration

This is my Valentine...pretending to be in a bad mood just before we went to celebrate...I was rushing him and kept telling him to hurry up! He expressed his displeasure here...



We like to tease each other and here if you look carefully, you can see that he is poking me in the side, making me laugh while the kids were trying to take a nice picture....



He is very silly...and very sweet!


So just as I posted a couple days back about our Valentines Day tradition, we decided to break with tradition for this year and celebrate...differently. This year, we bumped our celebration up by a few hours, and went out for a very nice brunch followed by some fun at the casino. We had a blast, the only bummer being that I didn't last too long in the actual casino because it was smoky. This casino was located in Missouri and they don't have the same anti-smoking laws that Illinois does. So a pregnant girl doesn't do so well in there, at least in terms of smoke. In terms of winning- this pregnant girl was fairly successful!
You might be wondering why, after such a detailed post regarding our fabulous Valentine's Day traditions and how we were looking so forward to our annual night of romance, did we change our plans. Well, the answer is simple. It seems our 7th grade son, Emanuel has also been bitten by the love bug and wanted to celebrate with his "friend." I say "friend" because I don't love the term girlfriend on a 13 year old! So we invited her over for pizza and Emanuel gave her some chocolates he'd purchased for her a couple days before. It was a lovely evening, even though Brice was his typical self and wouldn't leave Emanuel and his friend alone! I did my best to keep the babies away from them, so the babies and I played games in the dinning room while the older kids watched television together in the living room. After pizza and some hangout time, Albert and I dropped her off at home. Emanuel was very happy this Valentine's Day. And yes, it was worth changing our plans to make him happy. We had a fabulous time at brunch, and even though it was an over-priced brunch (it's not like I can make use of the champagne that come with it), I won enough money on a penny machine to cover back the cost we spent! Plus the thing I loved about our casino date was that it was a room full of adults. I got to watch Albert play Blackjack, which is something he loves, and even learned a thing or two! We each started with a set amount of money to play. Albert lost his money. I won extra on top of my money. I gave him my winnings so he could keep playing a few moments longer. He more than doubled my winnings. We cashed out and came home. Not too bad. I wish we could go more often, but I can see how it could easily become a bad habit, so we'll save it for special occasions.
Our Valentine's Day was wonderful. With all the snow that accumulated last night, it was very cozy and very content. I am very happy with my Valentine. I am in love with him and he is in love with me and we are in love with our ten children. I'm thinking that it doesn't really get much better than that.