Valentine's Day

Some families go all out and have fancy-shmance Valentine's Day dinners.  Not us.  We are quite the opposite: pizza and root beer, baby!  We used to eat it on our wedding china, but now that we have kiddos that's just too much effort. (And dangerous.) 

So here's what our table looked like this year:

We give the kiddos books for Valentine's Day, which I think is a great tradition.  (Although they willingly admit that they like the candy Grandpa ElRay and Grandma Susie send better.) 

Here's our fancy china.  Nice, right?

And here are a few random shots of my Valentines.  (Josh refused to have a picture taken, was grouchy, and wasn't wearing any pants.  Anyone want a three year old?  Free to a good home!)

Wait, what's that?  You want to know what that misshapen pink thing in the middle of the table was?  I was hoping you wouldn't notice.

Well, it's supposed to be a giant cupcake. See, my dad gave me a giant cupcake cake silicone pan for Christmas.  The boys had been begging me for a while to make a cake with it, and Valentine's Day seemed like a good enough excuse.

So I made it.  And it was cute.  For about three seconds.

And then I frosted it.

And things took a major turn for the worse.  See that crack?

One second after I took that picture it turned into this.

Dang it!  I'm not quite sure what happened with that.  I think the top must have shifted while I was frosting and decorating it.

Also, the frosting was apparently a little too thin.  Very too thin.  (It didn't seem that thin in the mixing bowl, I promise!)

I have never had a problem with frosting like this before. *sigh*

Things look a little better from this angle.

Or this angle.

But not this angle. 

Or this angle.

D'oh.

On the bright side, the cake was still very tasty.  I mean, seriously, how can you go wrong with milk chocolate cake mix with crumbled brownies mixed in, super-duper vanilla buttercream frosting, and Whoppers?

Mmmm(ish)...

As per usual we took several videos of the boys enjoying their candy.  My favorite is "Gross"; it starts out with a conversation with Spencer but quickly goes downhill as you can hear Josh gagging on and spitting out a mouthful of candy.

Yes, the Madsens are the epitome of Valentine's romance.