Through The Eyes Of An Accidental Housewife: Valentine's Day, a la Iraina Balmer

What, you say, could possibly have me jogging up a mountain at 4pm on Valentine's Day? Lack of planning and my stubborn need to be the best and coolest Scavenger Hunt Maker. Ever. I also believe that in addition to the mere fact that I ran up that mountain (I DON'T CARE if most people would call it a small hill) Danielle has some video footage of me falling down it, later. Or at least we thought we might re-enact my falling for the camera, because it was so funny. Re-enacting a brush with death may not however, be the smartest thing to do. But then again that has never kept me from doing anything... Stay tuned for a YouTube video.

View From The Top. Of the MOUNTAIN.

I totally outdid myself with DH's Valentine's gift this year. I made him a book. A bonefide book, hard cover and all. It's a cartoon, and pretty funny. And awesome. I would show you a picture of it, or an excerpt, except that I gave it to him and it's now gone. With him. Somewhere.

It's sort of like this. DH gets it....

It left little, well apparently no time, for me to think about the kids and their Valentine's Day. Because face it kids, you KNOW that I love and adore you. If there ever was any doubt it is erased when they see me in a bathing suit (which is a lot these days) and they open their mouths to say something (who knows what they mean to say) and I ASSUME it's about me and I tell them:
"See, THIS is what I have done for you, THIS is how much I love you." and I swipe my hand tellingly over my body and nod knowingly and they do the same, not so knowingly, because I think they have NO idea of what I am talking about. They just know that apparently I did something grave for them and they need to appreciate, appreciate, appreciate.

So, I had some stuff for them at the breakfast table, and they were talking about how excited they were to go to school and exchange Valentine's and I DID NOT want to be outdone by some random little treats from some random little kids that I blurted out: "Well, wait and see what I have planned for you today. Best. Scavenger. Hunt. Ever!" I nodded exaggeratedly to make sure I got my point across. And I thought: "Well, this is pretty stupid, you (I) remind me of Michael Scott in "The Office" when he promises to put a class of underprivileged kids through College should they graduate High School." He says it before thinking and then tries to find his way out of the predicament. I briefly marvelled at the fact that he and I had something in common, until I realized that he is an idiotic character in a sitcom, and then I knew I had to shape up. I WAS going to make this the best scavenger hunt ever.

And with the help of the Internet I was able to whip up an amazing outdoor hunt, because I knew they would never expect that. And to make it the coolest ever, I knew I had to hike up the mountain by the lake where they had spent the larger part of Sunday afternoon climbing around making a "club".

Unfortunately, I did not make it before they were home. But when they were reading the first clue, the one where I incorporated their chocolate owl from that morning into the clue out by the bird feeder, I tore out of the driveway in my VW Bug, hissing at Danielle to give me a 15 minute head start. And that brings us to how I was running up that ~~hill~~, err mountain, at 4pm. In flip flops. Which later kind of fell off and were enforcers in my sliding down the mountain and falling into bushels of thorns. All by themselves, with no plant attached, just sticking out to get me.