Valentine's Blog Love and.......Plain old love! Aren't they CUTE!

I had a great Valentine's Day. I spent it working of course and like most of you surrounded by treats and sweets. Most of which I was able to avoid.  My day started with stationary bike. I ran on Sunday and I am just not to the point I can run 2 days in a row yet. So I did my bike and then a little stretching. After that got kids off to school. I gave them their gifts. Books and a little candy.   Unfortunately my hubbie is sick with a sinus infection, so he spent the day in bed.

I took the car for a car wash on the way to work. It was nasty. Always makes me feel organized to have a clean car. It is an illusion mind you, but I like the feeling anyway. I arrived at work with a full schedule as flu in North Texas is in full swing. I spent a few minutes reading blogs in the car wash and on arrival at work. I was interested to see the wide variety of takes on Valentine's Day.

Clyde wrote a great post on being grateful for those that mean the most to us and reminding us that life is fleeting.  It's a reminder that never gets old. My answer to his question of who I'm most grateful for is obvious, my kids and husband.

Cute cards and flowers in the background from the kids via Nanny.

Patrick made me chuckle as usual with his silly ideas on ways to celebrate and asking what we had planned. I of course had planned to do dinner with the kids, boy scouts and baths and homework as usual. hubby and I have learned long ago that trying to go out on Valentine's is....well...less than easy. Even if he hadn't been sick, the plan would be the same. Nanny makes us dinner every year. I came home to pasta carbonara which I of course couldn't eat, but didn't tell her. Kids and hubs enjoyed it. Along with the dinner was this

Chocolate/peanut butter cheese cake which I also didn't eat. Taste, yes, a touch, eat...no.  But that's not all I was faced with today:

Mini Cupcakes

Homemade cookies co-worker brought in

My FAV, chocolate covered strawberries

I will confess I ate one, see it's missing. I ate another at home. The rest are for Nanny and Kids. These are probably my favorite dessert or at least top 5. I love em. And, they are fruit essentially, 50 cals each. I ate on plan the rest of the day and I drank my fluids. I realize that Allan didn't want to hear/see things like this, but hey, this is my blog. Ha ha. They were so good!

Jack wrote a great post, one of his serious ones which I generally always enjoy and find helpful. A letter to himself. I may just have to steal that idea sometime soon.

And there were so many others. So many great posts today.Some on finding love, others on losing it.  I can't mention them all. Christine with her Valentine's lore and SJB with her "Bah humbug" post were interesting and funny.  I was struck by a common theme of us humans trying to be loved, give love, find love. We all need it. And we can all have it. The key to it is loving ourselves. We have to love ourselves before we can really love another. We have to know ourselves to truly know what we want. I am so lucky to have found my partner, my soul mate. But, it wasn't all luck. It was work. I did a lot of work to learn about myself, get past many, not all, of my issues and look beyond myself. It was mostly about how I felt about myself inside. PLUS, it takes work to really know someone else, love them as you should. We are, after all, human!

Now I'm working on the outside. Today I wore the same shirt I wore last year on Valentine's. Unfortunately I don't have a picture from last year. Here's from today

Don't think I'll be wearing this again. I didn't realize how huge it was when I put it on this morning.

And then I saw my arms. Oh my. I'm really starting to get hanging skin under there!

Please tell me I'm not fooling myself into believing there is a little muscle starting to show!

.Here's my gift from hubby.

 I know it might not SEEM romantic, but here's the deal: All my work on those arms you see above sometimes leaves me sore. I'm still struggling with the tendonitis in my elbow which has limited my push ups. (Damn it! One of my fav exercises!).  He knows I have aches and pains. He knows I'm trying so hard to stay active and that I have many exercise goals. These will be coming in handy and it was a thoughtful gift. I'm using one tonight on my back!  I still have so much work to do. It's so easy to focus on the outside and forget there's always more improvements I can do inside, too!


Learning to look beyond myself became easy when I became a mom. When you have kids your world changes. Your outlook is completely different. All the little things you used to think were big issues suddenly seem small in the face of making a great life for your child.

And so I'll leave you with this thought......having love begins with showing love. Showing love to yourself and then to others. Find ways to be sure that the people in your life that matter most know how you feel. You never know what life holds for you or them.