Gilmores celebrate "A Lover's Day"

Valentine's Day is always a favorite at our house. Over the years our time has evolved from dress-up dates to fancy restaurants to focusing more on family, love and quality time. This week our track season just started, basketball season is just ending and our church's missions month (which we are very involved with) is well underway. Needless to say, our lives are busy and full. Ericlee and I decided the best way to spend our Valentine's night was a family night at home with fancy food and a movie. And we had our little love, Meilani, to make the evening fun.

As many of you know, my favorite way to express my love for people is through food. I planned a special meal for my family, including whole wheat bread, baby greens salad with pomegranate seeds and candied walnuts, filet mignon with goat cheese sauce, Italian mushroom risotto and Orange Cauliflower puree.

We also received a surprise package which added to our evening's festivities. At Ericlee's school each year families choose a teacher to "bless" throughout the year. The teacher does not know which family is sending the gifts. Each teacher fills out a little questionnaire with ideas of their favorite things. For Valentine's day, our P.E.S.T. made us a dinner-date-at-home care package. How appropriate! The package included a fondu pot for two with strawberries, chocolate and pound cake. They also included a Valentine shirt for Meilani, a copy of the movie HITCH, and plastic champagne glasses with sparkling cider. We added these to our feast.

Meilani was a big fan of the fancy glasses and the cauliflower puree. (Yeah, another veggie she digs!) I checked out a bunch of movies from the library to choose from and we decided on BEE SEASON starringRichard Gere. It turned out to be a mysterious and mystical movie about a girl who excelled in spelling bees. Kinda weird and not what we expected. The evening was "a lover's dream" as we indulged in the most important gift: quality time together.