Housewife Hacking

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner. It can be so fun to celebrate the love that you have for the one’s around you, but many time Valentine’s Day can come with a lot of pressure.  Pressure to get reservations at the best restaurant (or any restaurant at that rate), to find the perfect outfit, to find a sitter, to find the perfect gift.  All of this can get to be a little too much, especially after kids are in the picture.

Early in my husband’s and I relationship we started something a little different.  It kind of happened by accident, but it is one of my favorite traditions in our relationship.

It was 2006, the year that we were getting married. We were just out of college, with new jobs, new student loan payments and trying to save up for a killer honeymoon (which it was?). Valentine’s Day came around and we had both kind of forgotten about it.

At this stage in life we would get together with another couple every Tuesday and celebrate “Taco Tuesday.”  Well, this Valentine’s Day happened to fall on a Tuesday. We talked to our friends, who were in the same boat as us and they didn’t have anything planned either.  We decided to still get together and have our typical Taco Tuesday.

Us girls didn’t want to get jipped out of a night of no cooking, so we decided that we at least had to go out for tacos.  Like I said before, we were trying to save all that we could for our Honeymoon, so we were going for Taco Tuesday as cheaply as possible.  That night we ended up at Del Taco for 50 cent tacos.

I think our total bill was $3. We still laughed with our friends, held hands under the table and loved each other just the same. We realized that we didn’t need a fancy restaurant, expensive gift or new outfit to celebrate our love for each other.

The following year Valentine’s Day came around again.  I was working retail at the time and didn’t get that night off.  I was a bit bummed that I wouldn’t be able to celebrate with my husband, but that was part of the job.  As I was getting ready to take my dinner break, my husband came rolling into my department with a huge smile and a bag of tacos, and a tradition was started.

Since then we have kept the tradition alive.  Each year we celebrate with Mexican food, and each year looks a little different.  Some years we will make reservations at the fanciest Mexican restaurant we can find.  Others we will have tacos at home. Now that we have kids we never really know how it is going to go. We have had them join us for dinner, or we have gotten a sitter. We have been able to change it to fit the stage of life that we are in.

I love that we have created something that is just ours. Each Valentine’s Day I am reminded that our love is our own.  It doesn’t look like anyone else’s. It is cooky and different, imperfect and perfect and the life that we have built together changes a little bit each year.

I encourage you to look past the traditional Valentine’s Day this year. Find something simple and easy that is just yours. It doesn’t have to be about the grand gestures, but rather the little things that the two of you have created together.

That does not mean that fancy dinners and expensive gifts are a bad thing. I keep telling Brandon that one of these years we need to celebrate Valentine’s Day in Mexico. How is that for a grand gesture?? Maybe this is the holiday that the two of you enjoying do that for each other.

Whatever it is that you do, enjoy the little things you love about each other. The inside jokes that you have or the fact that you love singing in the car together.  We each have our own little quarks that are just ours in our relationships, ours just happens to be tacos.

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!

I would love to hear from you!! What is your Valentine’s Day tradition? And by the way, doesn’t my husband takes a mean selfie??