Valentines, Crafts and Manners/not Manners

Every Valentine's Day I make spaghetti with meatballs, breadsticks, and a dessert with the hope of teaching manners.  I use my china and make the kids get all dressed up. This year I made individual heart shaped cherry pies, and they were delicious if I should say so myself!  Luke my 8 year old said you aren't going to have candles are you!?  I said, "no, if you don't want me to."  He said, "no, go ahead."  (I knew he really wanted them.)  I made some cute Valentine boxes for my mom and mom in law.  I had the boys give Grammy and Nana flowers.  This was part of the manners lesson.  Then Ryan gave Maranda flowers and I (the beginning of ruining the night) gave my boys hovering remote helicopters!  I didn't mean for them to open them right then! However, dad and both grandads had to put batteries in them and test them out right that minute!!!  Gabe, (my 6 year old world champion pouter) crashed his into the kitchen island and it broke a wing, propeller or something like that!  He went into crazy high pitched crying and annoying bird noises!  I was trying to finish setting the table and ready to bust some butts!!! However, "Grammy to the rescue" was able to get him to the table.  Luke made annoying fart noises if we mentioned any country other than the USA when discussing the olympics.  (This was while he finished his spaghetti in a record 2 minutes and begged for more.) Gabe had another breakdown and decided to leave the table briefly.  Finally, Maranda went to get a napkin and came running back to the dinning room and fell.  She had a mouth full of Grammy's yummy chocolate cake that she had to spit into her fresh napkin so that she didn't choke.  Why did I even try to work on manners?  Once the kids left the table to go play we had a lovely conversation and I few of us enjoyed one of my favorite bottles of  B.R. Cohn wine.  I am working on the end of it now:)  Happy Valentines Day Everyone