Tradition anyone?

I was telling my mom about my Valentine’s Day experience and she just laughed. So I decided to share it with everyone and maybe give you some comic relief, too.

It started a few days ago as I was walking through the store and looking at all of the Valentine’s Day “stuff.” I wanted to do something fun for my kids, so I looked through the aisles and tried to decide what to get and if it was really worth it when I realized two things. 1 –My kids wouldn’t even know the difference. 2 –Did I really need more toys and candy?

I came to the conclusion that I didn’t want to spend any money. Some of my favorite Valentine’s Day memories where making heart-shaped homemade pizza. I’ve been wanting to make homemade pizza for a few weeks anyway, so this was the perfect time. I decided that I would do it on Sunday because I would have more time then if I tried to do it on Monday after work.

Sunday turned out to be quite the day. Chris made a quadruple batch of chocolate chip cookies so that he could take some to his home teaching families. He had to leave for choir practice before they were done, so I finished baking them. As soon as Chris arrived home he woke up Ethan so he could go home teaching. (Chris takes Ethan as his companion because it’s really hard for him to go with his assigned companion.) Ethan was extremely grumpy and we were trying to get him happy and ready to leave when our friends from Salt Lake called and wanted to come visit. –I was fine having them come visit, but let me just say my house was NOT in order for company. I agreed as long as they were okay with coming to a messy house and trying my first homemade pizza ever.

Our company arrived about 6:00 and Chris was supposed to be home about that same time, but he wasn’t. They watched Maggie while I started pizza (I wanted to start it sooner, but I was holding Maggie so that she would stay asleep –she was really grumpy after church so I didn’t dare lay her down).

The pizza experience was quite the adventure. I made the first batch of pizza dough (it took me forever to get the right amount of flour so it wasn’t sticky) and it was super thin and still wasn’t enough to cover the whole pan. So I washed the measuring cups and bowls and started again; this time making a bigger batch that I hoped would make two pans worth. It turns out that it was way more than that. So I had one “thin crust” pizza and one “super thick crust” pizza, plus a huge ball of dough left over for another pizza. At this point it was about 8:00 and I didn’t care about having a heart shaped pizza, just that it would get cooked so we could eat dinner. –Did I mention I was going through his adventure with company and no husband to help entertain them? And I think I used half a bag of flour trying to get the dough right!

Chris and Ethan finally got home and the pizza finally got done. It actually turned out great, two hours later than I wanted, but still good. The next time I make it will hopefully be without company around and in a clean kitchen. It turns out my kids are too young to even know what was going on… no surprise… but I’ll sure remember it. And all of this for the sake of a tradition!