valentine's day & weekend for the kids

I'm feeling a little Valentine hungover today.

Of course I indulged in sugar and wine, what better way to celebrate the loviness of our lives.

The husband completely took me by surprise with Valentine's day. It's our first Vday as a married couple and since we don't typically go all out for Valentines, I didn't think much of it. I usually spend the weekend of Valentines volunteering (more on that later) so we don't get to see each other much. Last year, the husband went to Whistler to watch some Olympic luge on Valentine's day, so I spend the day alone with the meow-meows, but he did bring me home a Quatchi so it was okay.

This year, the husband was sneaky and lying about all his surprise plans and let me tell you, he did good. Sunday night after my volunteering, I was dead exhausted but came home to a beautiful bouquet of flowers, complete with a hot pink boa and got told he was taking me for sushi. Delicious. So I thought, well since he got me flowers and we went for dinner, this is it.

Wrong.

Monday night I came home from work to a fully set table, complete with a bottle of wine that came home with us from Paris and a homemade card. Now I had told the husband earlier that afternoon that I would make dinner and we'd have a low key Valentines day and he agreed saying well I might be home earlier because the hockey game was on, but didn't know because work would be busy. That was around 3 o'clock. Liar, liar pants on fire was sitting on the couch at home.

He planned this ahead. He really came home early, around 2 o'clock to prepare for the dinner he made me. Which was delicious. After dinner, he surprised me with a heart-shaped raspberry mousse cake AND five french macarons from our favourite gourmet grocery store, Meinhardt.

I was so happy and surprised, I cried. Pathetic.

Pathetic he loves me so much. Pathetic I love him just as much.

This past weekend, as I eluded to earlier, I spent most of it volunteering for a well-known charity in B.C., one that is very dear to my heart and I've been involved with for 9 years. Variety - the Children's Charity is a world wide organization that helps children with life-debilitating conditions cope with real life. Whether it's providing a child with a wheelchair or a wheelchair accessible vehicle, Variety is there to help.

For the last 45 years, Variety of B.C. has held a telethon over the Valentine's day weekend to raise money for B.C.'s kids. This year we raised $7,012,483 over a 23 hour period.

I got 5 hours of sleep through the 23 hours, but it was worth every second.

My other valentine's got lots of sleep, as per usual.