Love Buzz

This post is about Valentine's Day. I hate Valentine's Day. I never liked it growing up and I sure didn't like it as a young adult. Now that I have kids? It's awesome. It's fun to teach them about what the different holidays mean, do some decorating, do some baking, do some making of things for other people. All great fun. 

This year I started the holiday off by dying my hair. The color is officially called 'Dark Auburn'. It's more dark than auburn, which is fine by me. I've had grey hair since I started grad school, just a few hairs here and there. Each kid gave me a few more, and now when I put it up in a pony tail I can see the wiry grey buggers sticking out all over the place. I never thought I would be the kind of person to be bothered by this, but I sure was. It makes me look SO OLD. And since I'm not yet 30 (at least for another couple of months) I decided enough is enough. A little semi-permanent hair dye isn't going to kill me. And I love it.

Lily's school delayed celebrating until the next week, so it was just a regular day at school. And a regular day of Thomas desperately trying to convince me that he, too, is in fact big enough to stay at pre-school with his favorite sister. 

I had been looking for an excuse to buy Lily the Frozen Castle Playset and Valentine's Day seemed just right. My mom had previously bought her the barbie sized dolls, and they were just begging for an appropriately scaled mansion to live in. She LOVES it. I can put on the soundtrack and she will happily sit there and play for like an hour at a time. It's fantastic. She prefers to use the small clip dolls when she plays by herself because they're easier for her to manipulate and change their clothes, but when we play together she likes to use the bigger ones. It's so fun.  

I don't even remember what this is all over his face, but it's still cute. 

We made some Valentines for the grandparents and Lily worked really hard to write her name on all of the ones she needed to bring to school. We were going to make our own Valentines for everyone, but once Lily saw the Disney princess ones at Meijer, it was a lost cause. And, honestly, it was enough work just to get her to write her name on them I can't imagine trying to make them all, too. 

Finally, Joe met us for dinner at the Buzz Cafe, here in Oak Park. They were hosting a fancy family dinner with a prix fixe menu. It was so awesome. I would highly recommend this to anyone with small kids who wants a chance to actually go out and eat a nice dinner on Valentine's Day. It was sort of an expected disaster. It took about 15 minutes to seat us, even with the reservations, but everybody was just waiting together, a bunch of kids played together, and people kept good attitudes. Then because the menu was set, the staff didn't have to waste time taking orders, they just brought stuff right out. And it was BYOB, so we got to bring our favorite cheap wine, Koonunga Hill. And it was close enough that we got to drink the whole bottle. They had fun food for the kids, good food for the adults, a guy playing the keyboard, and it was loud. Kids were talking loud, babies were crying or just making baby noises, and it was all ok. This is the most horrible picture of me ever, but it's the only one we got that night. 

This is one of my favorite restaurants in the whole world. We go every Saturday morning for breakfast and to see Joe's dad play with the Farmers' Market Band. I went there today for lunch with the kids because it had been a long morning and they serve peanut butter and jelly. There's a space in the back for the kids to play while waiting for food (not on Saturdays) and the servers are always super nice. I just love it.

So for the first time ever, I think, I can honestly say I had a great Valentine's Day.