Monday, February 14, 2011

Happy lovey dovey day! :)

Well, my poor little blog has sure been neglected lately!! Sorry about that . . . life got busy and we were out of the house a lot last week, which hopefully won't be the case this week. :) Hope you are all having a nice Valentine's Day! I had big plans to have the kids make Valentines, or at least do some kind of heart craft or decorations . . . but alas, I completely stalled on that. And I'm not going to waste time feeling guilty about it. :) We've actually celebrated the weekend very heartily (haha--pun not intended, honest!) by having a special dinner on Friday night, and then tonight we'll be having another kind of special one! We had thought about going out for dinner as a couple on Friday, but after talking it over we decided to just get some special (aka expensive) food that we wouldn't normally buy, and have a nice family night at home. We made sirloin steak with garlic butter sauce for Jim and me (and Sam had some, too), salad with homemade ranch dressing, and mashed potatoes with gravy. Mmmmm, it was heavenly. A little heavy on the garlic, but oh-so-good. The kids had boxed mac-n-cheese (which we pretty much NEVER buy) and were thrilled to pieces. They are very easy to please. :)

{our special dinner--and yes, Josiah was in his PJs, all day in fact!! oops!}
For dessert I had planned to make this amazing looking cheesecake . . . but part way into the process, I realized that I hadn't read the directions thoroughly, and it needed to be refrigerated overnight before adding the glaze. So we had ice cream sundaes instead, and dug into the cheesecake on Saturday (and we'll be having it tonight, too). It is VERY rich, but delicious! A splurge for sure, considering how much cream cheese, butter and chocolate were involved, but worth it for once in a while!

For tonight, I decided to make crock pot lasagna, which we haven't had in a while. I am in love with my new crock pot, by the way! This is my first time to try lasagna in it, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it doesn't stick. :)

I am very thankful for my Valentine (Feb. 7th marked 11 1/2 years of marriage for us!!) and of course my three little funny valentines, as well. :) They all bring so much joy to my life. Isn't God so good to give us the gift of love--His amazing unconditional love, and also the gift of people to love, and people who love us back. Happy Valentine's Day!

**So, do you all do anything special as a couple or a family for Valentine's Day? I'd love to hear!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Carrie,
I was so glad to see you posted today.:)I had planned on doing special things with our kids in prep for Valentines Day.I wanted to do Valentine plates for our neighbors and friends like we do at Thanksgiving.It just did not happen this year.My energy level is almost non existent right now.So today we made a special chocolate/strawberry cake with a homeade cream cheese frosting and white chocolate chips on top.It was special to us and we all enjoyed it.We even got to share a couple pieces with Great grandma next door.Maybe next year we will celebrate a little bigger.Your meal sounded SO good.:)We have found we enjoy our "family"dates at home much more then spending the same or more going out.~Nikki

Mary Ann said...

It sounds like you had a lovely Valentine's weekend! Mike & I both took last Friday off from work & we just had a nice, relaxing weekend together. He's working on some bookshelves & I have been doing some sewing so we just puttered around home & ran some errands together. Oh, and we had chinese & mexican dinners out. I didn't cook all weekend - I felt oh so spoiled!

Mrs.T said...

No special Valentine fun here -- Mr. T's new work schedule made that difficult. He did give me a Valentine, and I had made some cookies with Hershey kisses on Saturday and some heart shaped biscuits on Friday.

Carrie and Nikki, both the desserts sound just delicious. And Nikki, what a great thought to do Valentine plates for friends and neighbors. I'll keep that in mind for next year!

Anonymous said...

We had a very fun and busy Valentine's Day starting Friday and finishing Monday night. For family fun night we made Valentine cards and treat boxes with John 3:16 acrostic on them for a tea party our family had been invited to. We were the only Christians there and it was a neat opportunity to plant some precious seed :) Monday the kids and I along with a neighbor made up some more cards and treats and took them to a local elderly care place. We had so much fun and are looking forward to going back to visit with the residents there. I had planned to make lasagna, well, I did... but we did not all eat it together as our printer/ fax machine died! So my hubby and three kids had to make a quick trip to the nearest Staples, so we ended up being gone about 3 hours. Those of us that left grabbed whatever we could eat quickly and the kids at home enjoyed all the lasagna (thankfully when I saw how things were going I had pulled one out and put it in the fridge :))Oh, and Tuesday my oldest daughter made more cookies for Bible Study at our house in the evening - so other than Sunday she made LOTS of cookies! I am not normally a person who likes to run around and have things overly crazy BUT we all agreed it was a LOT of fun! Sorry, this is soooo loooong. Your meal sounded yummy!! I love staying home and cooking with the family. Yours and Nikki's desserts sounded yummy. I have never made a cheesecake, but my sister just said she was going to send a recipe for an easy one. I liked your Mom's idea of heart shaped biscuits. I think I will do that the next time I make them. Throughout the year I like to make my hubby's sandwiches on heart shaped bread to surprise him:) Okay, this really is to long and I will end now :)-Joey

Anonymous said...

Noticed that you said that you hoped that your lasagna would not stick to the crock pot....I use a crock pot all of the time and things hardly ever stick...cause we use olive oil spray out of a can that helps a whole lot...just thought you might like the idea.. we spray it no matter what we are putting in so it won't stick on... we cook most all of our meals in the crock pot since we are hardly ever home anymore with all of the stuff that we have to do away from the house each day....