A couple of years ago, my oldest daughter had trouble saying "Valentine's Day" so she called it "Love Day" and went around wishing everyone a "Happy Love Day." The moniker fit and we've been calling it "Love Day" ever since.
Every holiday is so much more fun with kids. They get so excited about simple things -- like paper valentines and pink-sugar-sprinkled cupcakes.
Their unabashed joy and giddy laughter makes me shamelessly feed the hype. I buy special Valentine's Day shirts and hair ties, I melt pink chocolate to dip pretzel rods into, I willingly gave them glue, glitter, paints and stickers to make Valentine's Day cards for all our family members (even though I knew it meant an hour of scraping Elmer's glue off the kitchen floor and picking glitter out of the living room rug).
Today, they were set to go...Valentine's clothes and hair ties in the bag (Grandma gets them dressed for school), pink cupcakes and pink lemonade for Kelly class (today's her snack day) and a pink-chocolate covered pretzel rod and Valentine for every person in Kelly and Lauren's preschool class.
Believe it or not...we even got out of the house early this morning -- nothing spurs the kids to get moving and cooperate (and put their boots on the first time they're asked) like the promise of a party.
I dropped them off at Grandmas, drove into work and saw my message light blinking on my phone. Sure enough, preschool had been canceled and my mother now had two disappointed, wailing preschoolers at her feet. Two preschoolers who don't care about snow, ice or whiteout conditions and are definitely not feeling the love.
Today the things I LOVE most in my life (not counting the obvious ones like husband -- even if he does hunt dogs -- and my kids -- even if they are sometimes inconsolable temper-tantrum-throwing tyrants) are:
* My garage
* My four-wheel drive vehicle
* The fact that snow removal is soley my husband's job
* The coffee man -- who just delivered a new box of regular coffee to the newsroom kitchenette. A newsroom on decaf is just, well, wrong. Hot caffeine is almost as central to the newspaper business as ink and paper.
Happy LOVE Day all. Here's hoping you find something worth loving today (and every day).