My Funny Valentines

I've realized recently that kids make holidays much more fun. Clara is old enough to really get into the holiday hoopla, and since it takes so little to thrill her we end up getting lots of credit for very little work!

We began the day with pink pancakes. They started out as heart-shaped pancakes, then Jeremy told me they looked more like amorphous blobs than hearts, so we switched to circles (well, he just took matters into his own hands and started cooking circles, which was just as well).

For lunch we had heart-shaped sandwiches and heart-shaped jello jigglers (you may have seen the pudding-jello jiggler recipe in the February Friend magazine, if you get it). I duly noted that half the battle in any great holiday celebration is just walking around cutting food out of appropriately shaped cookie cutters. Genius.

For dinner, we went all out and had steak. Yes, Rachel and Jeremy bought and ate actual beef. Miracles do happen. We broiled it, and we spent most of the time in fear that our oven was going to catch on fire. Jeremy even busted out the fire extinguisher, read the instructions, then told me that if the oven did indeed catch fire that he would be sure to keep the kids safe but that I was otherwise more or less on my own. He is pretty clutch in a crisis. In the end, though, nothing caught on fire and the steak was decent. Maybe we'll make it a tradition and eat red meat every Valentine's Day.