springdellgirl

Valentines Day, Tainted Peanut Butter and Dave Ramsey

The kids and the cute Valentines table they set!

I hope everyone had a great Valentines Day. We sure did! Tyler's birthday is the week before Valentines Day so Tyler and I usually go out for dinner and do our romantic date then and we celebrate Valentines Day with the kids. I spent the day running back and forth between both Reilly and Kameron's classes as I was helping with both parties. I had Ailey with me and she was absolutely thrilled to be at school and going to the parties. School Valentine Parties have sure changed since I was a kid. Gone are the days of just having heart-shaped sugar cookies and punch. Reilly's class had a chocolate fountain (with pineapple, strawberries, pound cake, marshmallows, graham crackers, and pretzels for dipping) and chocolate gelatto from the local Italian restaurant. Delicious! They also had crafts, games and goodie bags. Kameron's class also had quite a spread with a fruit tray, veggie tray, cheese plate, cupcakes, sugar cookies, chips, and pop. They also had crafts and games. I was explaining to the kids that back when I was a kid..."the olden days"...we only had cookies, punch, and handed out our valentines and we LIKED IT (in the voice of a grumpy old man)...we didn't have crafts, and games, and chocolate fountains!!

There is also an obscene amount of candy that is handed out. I explained to the kids that we used to only get conversation hearts with our valentines or a sucker if you were lucky. I remember dumping out my hearts and picking out the ones that said the appropriate thing for the appropriate person and sticking them in the little envelopes with the Valentines (valentines don't even come with envelopes anymore). I remember taking quite a while finding just the right valentine for each person on the list. I would find the special one that would let that special someone know just how I was feeling about him and then I would pick out conversation hearts that reiterated those feelings. I always picked out the Strawberry Shortcake ones (the kids were shocked that Strawberry Shortcake was around WAY BACK THEN). I remember picking out one for Brad Roper (my crush of 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade...he was dreamy) that said "You are berry special!" I loved getting my valentines and would scrutinize all the messages and the conversation hearts. The best valentines were the ones that said "I love you...from your Secret Admirer".






Later on when I lived in Springdell it was a tradition there to deliver your valentines to all your friends on Valentines Night. Ding-and-Ditch was the method that was used. I used to love to open the door and see a pile of valentines on the door step. We did this up through Junior High and High School. Once I got a big fabric covered heart-shaped box full of chocolates from my 6th grade boyfriend and neighbor Mike Bills. Very exciting! The boys in the dell would play pranks on me and my friends. Many a time I would open the door and see a shiny valentine and go to grab it and suddenly the valentine would jerk away from me and I would hear hysterical laughter from the bushes where the boys had it one a piece of fishing line. One year it was a valentine, the next a candy bar, and then next a dollar bill. Some how we fell for it every year. My boyfriend from 9th grade and neighbor Rex Nielson did give me the dollar bill that year and wrote on it "Rex + Kristin" which I glued into my journal!! AW...young love!! Interesting side note...after I moved away to Kansas City Rex dated Vanessa's (from book club) sister, Julie, for a few years. I was crushed! Small world though huh?






Now that I've had my little trip down memory lane...I will return to this Valentines Day. We usually do a "fancy" dinner for the kids with table cloths, cloth napkins, the good dishes, candles etc. The kids always want homemade heart-shaped pizzas for dinner along with the funky pretzel strawberry jello salad which is weird yet surprisingly good. They pick out a few other things to go on the menu but pizza and pretzel salad are must-haves. This year the kids decorated the table (See above photo)...then we put out their Valentine surprises on their plates. We had fun!






Onto the tainted peanut butter...some peanut butter was recalled last week due to salmonella contamination. Imagine my surprise when the very tainted peanut butter in question was in our pantry half-eaten. Could that have contributed to our illnesses of last week? Who knows? After totally FREAKING out and spending an incredible amount of time inquiring into the digestive habits of each member of the family I came to the conclusion that we were all ok...thank goodness. I had several phone calls from 3 different members of my family warning me about the bad peanut butter and then they were all shocked that I had actually purchased the "Great Value" peanut butter. "Why?" they all chorused "Our family only eats Jiff"!! (Isn't it funny how families even years later are still loyal to the brands they used as kids??) Well I usually always DO buy Jiff (extra crunchy) but thanks to my budget and that dang Dave Ramsey I have purchased the "Great Value" (which turned out to be not-so-great) brand for the past few months. Scary!

Also thanks to Dave Ramsey I will have to wait a lot longer for some new flooring in our Kitchen and Living Room. We got our tax return on Friday (yes...we are THOSE kind of people who do our taxes very early) and we got Tyler's bonus on the same day. So we were feeling very rich indeed. I was ready to fly off to sunny somewhere and was busy plotting all the ways to spend the cash when I was brought back to reality by good ole Dave Ramsey whose mantra is to PAY OFF DEBT!! Which of course we needed to do. So by Tuesday our wad of cash was gone but quite a bit of debt wiped out. I had been whining to Andrea about not getting my new floors at book club and she told me that paying off debt was going to feel so much better...guess what...she was right! The floors will have to wait a bit longer.