Balentime's Day @ Postino

Holidays are a whole lot more fun when you have kids! Even the less significant ones become something more to look forward to. My mom gave us some paper doily hearts in January to put in our windows for the month of February. It's one of the many traditions we had growing up, so I was excited to have Kleven help me deck out our windows this year. On February 1st we used double-sided sticky tape to hang them, which was a bit confusing for the little guy. He was having a hard time keeping the hearts off his fingers and didn't quite understand what I meant when I said to spread the hearts out instead of putting all twenty-something in the same window pane square. Valentine's Day was easy to explain though; I told him its a day when we get to tell everyone how much we love them. He repeated that phrase almost on a daily basis... after every time he asked me if today was the day. We spent a few long afternoon making handmade cards (which never got delivered) and ate lots of Dove Special Dark chocolate and read the messages inside the wrapper to each other. When the day finally came we took some treats to my mom and sisters and Kleven was SO excited! Then he had a meltdown because he didn't get to keep any of the treats and couldn't figure out where his presents were. Who said anything about presents? We had a nice evening, the boys and I, while Chris was at school taking a final. Talk about romantic! Actually, he had been planning for weeks to take me out on a REAL date. We went out on Friday night, ditching the ward barn dance, and drove to Phoenix for the most delicious food I have eaten in a long time! (Thanks to Brad and Jessica for watching the boys!) The restaurant is called Postino. It's an old post office turned into a wine bar with a very simple menu. If you like Meditteranean food or if you're craving a panini or bruschetta worth bragging about, this is the place! Better yet, if it sounds at all like something you'd like to try, we'd love to tag along!