At this point I took them home, gave them a snack and started the difficult process of getting everybody "dressed fancy". This took all available time, and we headed out the door a few minutes after 5pm. We took a cab over to the place where "graduation" was happening, a very strange little club off in the industrial wilderness of Goose Island called "Slick's". The event went fine (fortunately The Wife eventually showed up, as I was getting tired of having to enlist folks to take #2 to the ladies room), and we were able to "escape" with one of my classmates who had driven there.
Anyway, once everybody else had gone off to bed, I had to go into "midnight present" mode ... going over to Jewel to get roses for The Wife ... it's always a challenge to "surprise" The Wife with flowers, as it usually requires running out in the middle of the night, fortunately, Jewel does a nice job in their floral department, and they're open all night. Also useful was discovering that Jewel had some wrapping paper that was at least suggestive of Valentines Day (Walgreens and Osco were stripped bare) to get the various gifties wrapped.
I also put together all the cards that #1 had picked up from Dojo (very smart, they had valentines that were "gift certificates" good for a free month and a free uniform for all the kids to hand out to their friends!) and then tried to go to bed. For some reason, this was just not happening, having those "need to get this done" sorts of dreams that just churned and churned. I then had to get up early to finish #1's cards (she had decided that a chocolate heart had to be attached to each), leaving just enough time for us to get through her homework and get her over to school.
Now, at no point last night or this morning did #1 seem to be feeling poorly, but round about noon I get a call saying that she's sick and I have to get pick her up. I wonder what this is about, since it would seem counter-intuitive that she'd be willing to miss Valentine's. Anyway, I dragged her over to my mom's and I'm about to go get #2 and head over there with her as well.
Is everybody else having a fun day too?