What I did on my Valentines day

I will begin with Friday night. Reed and I went to Outback for dinner because, well, we had a gift card and that is largely what determines where we go when we go out. They had a Valentines special which we of course did the math on and thought-what a deal, that is for us. The special involved a blooming onion, which I have never before purchased. Reed summed it up like this "it is funny to be eating state fair food in a restaurant." We then consumed a salad, steak and potato. At this point I was feeling uncomfortably full, but we still had cheesecake coming. So we had cheesecake. I was reminded of the Princess Bride where the two dueling factions (can't remember names, it has been a while) at the beginning of their fight the one asks if they are going to fight to the death, and the other says no, we are going to fight to the pain, so that forever you will have to remember and live with the shame of your loss. So when the cheese cake came I ate to the pain, and then had the last two bites. I was miserable. We went to Target afterwards and could barely walk around we were so full. It is a good thing we don't do that very often.
On Saturday morning we had heart shaped pancakes, which Reed couldn't even eat because he was still miserable from the night before. The girls had been eating so much candy that they barely ate. I of course wondered to myself why I had gone to the effort, oh well. We rode our bikes to the park, came home and Zoe decided she wanted to try riding without training wheels. So she took them off ,she has done this a lot before, but this time she just started going and quickly had it all figured out. This all happened while Heidi was at a birthday party. When Heidi got home I joked with her that she would be the next one to learn to ride with out training wheels. She smiled and said no-but a few minutes later she was headed in and when I asked he what she was doing she said "I am going to take off my training wheels." Sure enough, we took them off and she had the hang of it in no time. They were both so excited and proud of themselves. It just so happened that Reed missed both of them. I had Zoe go and get Reed so that he would feel a part of the process, but by that time it just frustrated her to have him trying to hold on. She kept yelling let go and he was to nervous to. Reed was asleep when Heidi pulled off her feat. I took a picture and then went and showed him. He was just coming out of sleep. He looked, then he looked again and asked "Is that Heidi?" Shortly thereafter we brought the kids in to put them in church clothes for a marathon baptism session. One member baptism and two convert baptisms. We were at the church from 5pm to 7:30. We came home by way of Wendy's and after getting them fed and bathed and in bed I went to the store to fill our fridge which was barren because I hadn't been to the store for a week. I was able to see the sorry looking picked over Valentine's displays and the few sorry saps making a last ditch effort to impress their significant other. Admittedly I am not a huge Valentines day fan. I much prefer random acts of caring scattered throughout the rest of the year.
As I was helping Heidi say her prayers I told her to say thank you for being able to go to the baptisms "no, not that", but when I told her to say thank you for being able to ride a two wheeler she started bouncing up and down she was so excited. Today the first thing she asked was when was she going to be able to ride her bike. Lunch after church was painful-all Zoe and Heidi wanted to do was ride bikes. Heidi just kept going and going once she was out. She lasted for almost an hour after all the other kids had parked their pedals. I was talking to the neighbor about what a sense of freedom being able to ride a bike gave us as kids. I can see that in Heidi's eyes.