Valentine's Day

Oh how I love Valentine's Day!

For lunch the girls wanted to have a "Valentine tea party" on their newly finished tea party table and chairs. I am quite pleased with how they turned out, and you can read about those projects over at my creative blog.

Complete with heart shaped peanut butter and honey sandwiches, heart shaped chocolate cakes, red raspberry lemonade, marshmellows, red candy pieces, and apples. Having little girls is fun.

The first half of the day was okay. Then I had to run some errands before I picked up Ethan from school, and that's when it happened. I felt my first contraction while standing in the baking section. And then my second while in the chip aisle. And then my third while...you get the idea. By the time I picked Ethan up from school and got home, I was doubled over in pain.

I tried my hardest to ignore them, thinking maybe it was all in my head or that just MAYBE it was a severe case of indegestion (I'd suffered my share of embarrassment by calling the doctor over that before). While making our fancy Valentine dinner, they started coming every three minutes. Panic set in, but I still tried to ignore them. The kids were sitting at the kitchen table finishing up some Valentines for Dad and they were acting like typical kids, but amidst the pain and panic, crazy Mom came unleashed and I started yelling at them to "CLEAN UP THE MESSES!!" Totally scared them. After three hours of pain, I called Cody and started bawling.

Our fancy dinner never came to pass. The chicken burned and nothing else went as planned. The cute place setting cards that the girls started to help me make will have to wait until next year. The bingo cards that needed to be cut out sat there on the counter, and finally, poor Hailey started cutting them out herself. After dinner they played bingo as I listened with my eyes clinched shut while laying on the couch. It is not how I envisioned spending one of my favorite holidays.

I keep telling myself that "it's only one year..." that things won't go as I'd like. Right now I have a list a mile long of projects I need to do before March when my body officially goes kaput. And then I reminded that this is my fifth baby in only seven years, and that here at 32 weeks my body has in fact already gone kaput. I must stop and certain things will have to wait. And it's driving me crazy.