This Valentine’s Day, the City of Vacaville hopes to provide an opportunity for parents to take a night off.

Recreation Coordinator Lisa MacAllister and her team have reinstated the “Parent’s Night Out” program, kicking off the new year with a special Valentine’s Day theme for the kids.

The event, hosted at the Cambridge Thank Goodness It’s Fun (TGIF) center, has a capacity for “upwards of 40” kids, says MacAllister. However as of early this week, only 12 students were registered.

“We’re hoping this last week to get an influx of last-minute reservations,” she says. “We definitely have space to provide more programming”

The kids can expect Valentine’s Day themed activities put together by Vacaville recreation employees, the same employees that are stepping up to watch the kids. MacAllister says they have been excitedly planning activities and posting decorations.

“We expanded it pretty late in the evening for my staff to work, but they’re excited. They’re all on board,” says MacAllister. In fact, staffing the event was more about picking out those who would get the opportunity to be a part of “Parent’s Night Out” because of the substantial interest, she says.

MacAllister says that one program lead, Mayaika Ellis, has gone above and beyond, decorating and preparing programming for the event. “The idea of having specific activities that are geared around this theme for Valentine’s Day really pumped her and her staff up,” said MacAllister.

The night is taking place at Ellis’ usual programming location, the Cambridge TGIF center, so MacAllister had extra time to decorate for the big night.

She says that although initially the plan was to host these events at Vacaville community centers, they have had more success when they are hosted at after school programming and their Thank Goodness it’s Fun (TGIF) Club sites.

MacAllister says it was very important that Parent’s Night Out fell on Valentine’s Day. “It’s the norm for my programming to offer fun, safe educational type of experiences that’s based on recreation for our kids,” she said. “We’ve got that, and we’ve got a lot of opportunities for that throughout the year, but we wanted to specifically target this event for Parent’s Night Out.

“We have a lot of families that may not be near a strong support system in terms of family and close friends with longevity. So we wanted to be able to offer something for a safe night.”.

Part of that, she says, is extending the event to four and a half hours — well past the standard three hours. “We really want to give them the full time of an evening, maybe kind of mimic what they may ask their typical babysitter for,” said MacAllister.

As of now, MacAllister has plans for “Parent’s Night Out” events in September, October, and December, but hopes to to make the night a regular occurrence. “We’re putting surveys out to the community to get more theme-based ideas, to see if this is something that we can offer once a month across the board,” she says.

“I know there’s a need out there for families, so we just want to continue to expand and be able to provide that for the community,” says MacAllister.

If you go …

WHAT: “Parent’s Night Out”

WHEN: Feb. 14, 5:30 p.m.-10 p.m.

WHERE: Cambridge TGIF Center, 3490 Nut Tree Rd., Vacaville.