St. Valentine's Day

We decided to let our son spend the night with his Grammy after our dinner party Saturday night. It made it much easier for us to clean up her house after she was kind enough to let us transport our party to her house on short notice. This meant we had a Sunday morning to ourselves.
I was very naughty and decided to skip Mass. I was already feeling to tired to get up and get ready when Mr. W tempted me with talk of biscuits. So after popping into Stumptown to get a bag of coffee, we walked over to Pine State Biscuits to get breakfast. We love that this little spot of heaven is so close to our house. It isn't doing my figure any favors though. They have added to their menu since the last time we were there, but Mr. W still likes to get the Reggie, which is a biscuit sandwich with egg, cheese, a piece of fried chicken and topped with gravy. I usually go for biscuits and sausage gravy, but decided to try a ham, egg, and cheese biscuit sandwich. I was happy to see that they finally offer hot tea. I always have to make my own at home and put it in a travel mug before we head over. They were down to one oven so it was a longer wait than usual and so crowded that we had to eat outside. It was a gorgeous day though so we didn't mind a bit.
We walked over to Hawthorne afterward. Mr. W picked out a Richard Scarry book for our little Valentine. I would have liked to go for a longer walk, but he kept insisting that we had to go home; I began to get suspicious. It turned out he had ordered flowers for me and didn't want to miss the delivery. My sorority sister Ms JH, who is also originally from Portland, has a floral business. This is her busy time of year as you can imagine, so I was very excited to have a little visit with her when she made the delivery. the two of them put together a great gift for me. he requests the color purple and she always arranges something lovely!
After Ms JH had to go on her way, Mr. W got down to the busy task of rooting out the dead animal. What a horrible way to spend St. Valentine's Day, but it couldn't be put off any longer. He is so good to me, he never accepts my offers of help in removing carcasses. Poor thing he had to remove some plywood panels in order to access the crawl space where that little effer had gotten in and they burrowed underneath the plastic sheeting to die. After he removed it he used cinder blocks and bricks to block off the access under the stairs. Hopefully that will keep wild and domestic animals out of there.
With the source of the odor removed and the house well aired out, I set to work preparing for our dinner at home. In the winter issue of Victoria Magazine I found the idea of setting up a dinnertable in front of the fireplace for a romantic dinner for two. I loved this idea and decided the 3 of us could fit around a card table in front of the fire. I set the table with peach colored linens I inherited from a great aunt and moss rose dishes from a great grandmother. The copper fondue set came from the Ws. The Waterford champagne flutes and bud vase were wedding gifts.Our very first St. Valentine's day was at the beginning of our courtship and Mr. W prepared fondue at his home. Now that we live here together we have kept this same tradition every year. We each had several fondue sets when we combined households so we are well prepared for a future of fondue parties. This year we only did a basic Neuchatel recipe; our dippers were bread, apples, carrots and broccoli. It was perfectly plenty! This year the littlest W was able to weild the fodue fork to do some of his own dipping. Afterward we exchanged Valentine letters and opened cards. We all enjoyed our fireside, candlelit meal.