Valentine’s Day has never been my favorite holiday, but the quads are warming my heart to it. All month we had fun decorating their bulletin boards with red and pink hearts, reading Valentine’s themed books, and talking about love.  Can you spy their heart art?

As a token of our affection, we made scribble heart mugs with Sharpies for each of our regular babysitters.  We then filled them with Hershey’s kisses and hand decorated Valentine cards.  I bought each child a $1 box of cards from the Dollar tree and let them loose with crayons and stickers. I had grand plans of letting them deliver cards to the other kids on our block, but ran out of steam for that.

When Valentine’s Day arrived we didn’t have anything planned aside from giving the kids a few trinkets.  While the girls and I were getting ready for the day, George announced the boys had an errand to run.  About 45 minutes later, they returned brandishing a gorgeous bouquet of gladiolas and a box of chocolates.  In addition to my gift, the boys chose a pony for each of their sisters and cars for themselves.  The thought of George and the boys choosing Valentine’s gifts melted my heart.  In fact, I hope they just started a long standing tradition for the Shawver men.

Instead of lining up a babysitter for a Valentine’s date night, George and I decided a family date night better suited us.  When you go out for a date on Valentine’s Day, candlelight ambiance is a must so we headed to Cracker Barrel, and invited Grandaddy to join us.   When we explained that we were meeting Grandaddy for dinner, the quads insisted we were going to his house.  Even after arriving at Cracker Barrel, they maintained that it was Grandaddy’s house.  Ironically, one of the hostesses told us the original Cracker Barrel concept was to make you feel as if you were having dinner at your grandparent’s house.  I think they successfully implemented that concept….as far as the quads are concerned Grandaddy lives at Cracker Barrel.

After dinner, we weren’t quite ready to head home and instead enjoyed hanging out on the front porch while the quads entertained other patrons with their dancing.

There wasn’t enough stamina for dinner and a movie on the same night.  However, we made good use of President’s Day by catching the Penguins of Madagascar at a discount Cinemark theater.  I’ve been wanting to take the quads to the movies, but wasn’t willing to shell out $60-70, especially without knowing how they’d handle it.  When we paid a mere $1.15 per ticket, I didn’t mind gambling on whether or not it would go well.

Before entering the theater, we warned the quads it would be dark and could be loud at times.  We then grabbed a booster seat for each child and scouted out a free row of seats.  Much to our dismay, the longest row was only five seats wide.  Instead of taking up two rows, we opted to contain our crew in one row and Sydney sat in George’s lap, which is probably where she would’ve ended up anyways.  Even when the theater became fully dark, the quads were content watching the previews and were captivated by our feature presentation.   They really seemed to pay attention to the movie and asked questions about what was happening or made comments about what they noticed.  The biggest problem was leaving when the movie ended.  Rylin dug in her heels and pleaded with us to stay for another movie.  We had such a great time I can’t wait to take them to another theater movie!  I just hope they get used to visiting the discount theater because first run movies would easily break the bank.

What are your favorite family date night activities?

xoxo,

Amber