Valentine’s Day growing up was always fun in my house.  We would always leave Valentine’s on our best friend’s porches and then ring the doorbell and run so we weren’t caught.  Then my mom would ring our doorbell and leave a gift card and our favorite box of cereal! It was always the best! We love cereal at our house. 

When I got older, it was more of just an excuse to hang out with friends on a weekday.  When I started seriously dating, I never had a boyfriend on Valentine’s Day. I always ended up breaking up with them the week or two before, because I wouldn’t be feeling it anymore and didn’t want them to do anything for me for Valentine’s Day if I knew it wasn’t right.  

When I met Kyle though I didn’t know what he was going to plan for Valentine’s Day.  I had always pictured some nice dinner and romantic gifts, but our first Valentine’s Day together Kyle was working late at the bank and didn’t get home until 7.  We knew we didn’t want to try to do a fancy dinner so late at night, especially since it was hard to get reservations that late.  Kyle always loved coming up with unique date ideas, so when he said he was going to plan something more on the fun side….I knew I was in for a treat.

OUR VALENTINE’S DAY TRADITION:

Kyle decided that if we wouldn’t have time to go to a nice sit down restaurant, we were going to go to ALL of our favorite non sit down restaurants.  We basically made the biggest feast of our favorite foods and it was INCREDIBLE! We went to Noodles and Co for our favorite mac n cheese, Chick Fil A for our favorite chicken nuggets, KFC for some biscuits, Coldstone for our favorite Ice Cream, Red Robin for our favorite fries, and Hires Big H for our favorite burgers. We also got a water cup from each restaurant to see which company had the best water.  It was Chick Fil A in case you were wondering.  I’m a huge water drinker, so that was oddly fun! Then we took it back to my house and ate it while watching the movie “Valentine’s Day”.  It was so yummy and we definitely had a food coma after.

WHY WE LOVE IT:

We love this tradition because it is something we can do every year, something that is easy, it’s fun, and different than the typical Valentine’s Day plans.  We also love it because this is something we can do for the rest of our lives, especially when we have kids.  We are always trying to think of fun traditions that we can do as a whole family and this is exactly something we can do all together.  We could turn it into where each person chooses their favorite item and then we all eat everyone’s favorite. You can also go to different places each year as well, which is fun! Each year we have some of our favorites stay the same, and other places change.

SOME TIPS WE’VE LEARNED:

Plan, plan, plan! It can take awhile to get each of your food items, so make sure to plan out where you are going and how long it’ll take to get it all.  We make sure to get foods we can’t heat up or that need to be hot, last.  We get items that can wait a little bit longer at the beginning.  We also make sure to plan out which restaurants are closest to each other so we aren’t going all over the place.  Anywhere that you can do drive through or call ahead, use that! We always make sure to call ahead our mac n cheese and fries! It helps so that you maximize your time.  With what food you choose, we’ve learned to choose our favorites based on what would make up a whole meal.  For example, we always have a main dish and lots of side dishes and a dessert.  

We love our tradition and are so excited to see which restaurants we choose this year.  Let me know in the comments which restaurants you would choose and happy Valentine’s Day!