Red Milk

As holidays go, Valentine’s Day is one of the more treacherous ones for me.  Valentine’s Day has a tendency to sneak up from behind and then jump out in front of me at last moment. 

The kids still miss the heart shaped cookies that Lisa made them.  Heck, Abby is nineteen and still talks about how much she misses the red food dye in her breakfast milk on Valentine’s Day.  Not to mention, they still expect me to do a little something for them on all these mass produced and repetitive holidays.  I think they would like, at the very least, milk with red food dye and maybe a little red bag with some sort of goodies and or a small gift or two.  You know, like mom used to do.  Would they give me any grief if I did nothing, of course not.  However, if I can make it hurt just a tiny bit less by doing a little something for them, then what the heck… 

This year was not so bad.   I have had my mind on other things but I still knew that Valentine’s Day fell on Sunday this year.  So, this year I took precautions.  I knew Pastor Tony would be in rare form on Sunday.  I was sure that he would render a Valentine’s Day sermon to be remembered.  Considering he is a devoted Husband, I had no doubt that he would take full advantage of the day and be prepared with plenty of laughs and some solid marital advise.  So, I planned accordingly and ditched church.

I came up with a plan to make it a boys day out.  After all, Abby was spending her day with boyfriend of the month.  I decided it was time for another highbrow cultural excursion into Atlanta.  I convinced Matt and his buddy William to go to the High Museum in Atlanta for the day.  We saw the Leonardo DaVinci exhibit.  It was an awesome experience and some of the works in bronze (most by other artists) just left me speechless. 

Without exception, I always have a good time with the boys.  When it’s just us guys it’s a drama free day.  The only issue tends to be over exuberance.  That’s typically easily rendered with a glancing blow to the back of the head (I’m just kidding so don’t go turning me in to the state department of child services or anything!!).

The day pretty much passed without a hitch.  Later that evening Baby Girl was able to ditch the boyfriend and make it out to the farm.  Once it was finally just the three of us I passed out those little red bags filled with goodies.  I will never pretend to believe that I do as good a job with these things as Lisa did.  I do believe, however, the kids will never forget how much she loved them and that I always will (even if I don’t do the red food dye in the milk).