St. Valentine's Day from our Family

My entire life, I've never really been a fan of Valentine's Day. There were two years that were special and I liked, but that was it. One was in high school. I had done an impromptu speech about Valentine's Day and proceeded to say how I hated it and why. That Valentine's Day, I received two sets of flowers in the front office, one from my father- which he'd never done my whole life- and one from a "secret admirer". I later learned it was a friend, but it meant so much to me. That was my senior year of high school.

The other year I specifically remember was when my husband and I were dating, almost engaged. I had spent the weekend in SC where he lived, and went home because I had to work. I somehow then had two days off, so turned around and drove back to SC less than 24 hours later. He came home after work, and I was standing at his door, waiting for him, completely surprising him.

Other than that, Valentine's has never been any thing special or important to me or us. However, I decided this year to take it as an opportunity to teach my children about love. Last week, instead of focusing on a letter for school, we focused on love. We memorize 1Cor 13:4&5, "Love is patient, Love is kind, Love is never rude." (The parts that are important and easy for a 3 & 4 year old to memorize!). We talked about how one part of loving others, is praying for others, and finally made this.

It has names of several people we know, mostly family since we rarely get to pray for them by name. My husband is one of 14, I'm one of 5, about 15 grandkids on his side, almost 6 on mine, so that makes it difficult to pray for even each family individually. Normally our evening prayers include "Mommy, daddy, Z,H,A, Nanny, Poppy, Grandma, Grandpa, and all our aunts, uncles, cousins and friends." This way, we listed each individual family, and several of the kids' friends (and mine) that my kids suggested. Each evening at dinner, we each draw one and pray for that person or family. I feel that God will use this to be praying for people that need our prayers when they do. Tonight was cool because I happened to draw my mom, my husband his mom, and H drew my husband's dad. It felt nice and appropriate for Valentine's Day. :)

Last week, we also made Valentine cards. I wanted to make more, but it was very difficult to get 3 kids and husband to do finger prints, so only 12 people are lucky enough to get a late V-Day card from us. And I say late because they've been in the van to go to the Post Office since Saturday, and finally got mailed today. Oops! (click on the picture to see enlarged if you'd like.)

After not liking Valentine's Day much myself, I wanted to be sure my kids' got to have the experience of Valentines Day. It started with lunch, when they got red heart ice cubes in their milk, which then turned pink. They LOVED this.

After lunch, we made Valentine pictures for daddy. They LOVED getting to get paint on their hands and feet, and I even let the 'baby'. She's soooo growing up! At 17.5mo, she's not so much a baby anymore. :(

They say "From the bottom of my heart (With their hands making a sort-of heart haha) to the tips of my toes... I LOVE YOU!"
**I must say, all the wonderful ideas above were from pinterest. I can't say how much I LOVE that site enough!!

Then the older two still wanted to paint, so I put the youngest down for a nap, and bravely let the other two go to town while I did an hour workout.

The final product

After we cleaned up the paint, I colored our dining room windows. If you have never used the crayola window crayons- they are awesome! My brother's girlfriend first told me about them when she used them on her car windows upon his return from a deployment. I then bought them when my husband returned, and wrote all over our car windows. Since I still have them, every now and then I'll write on the windows or mirrors for fun. The kids love seeing the writing on the windows. I might let them write one day ;-)

After the windows, I let them decorate the table to surprise Daddy while I took a shower. I also pulled out our fancy plates for dinner, as I wanted them to know it was a very special occasion.

It's covered in fake red rose petals and tons of pink and white hearts they cut out with my hole puncher. I had big plans for dinner... Meaning at 3:30 I thought "Hmm, what shall I make?" I got out some ground beef and figured I'd make a meatloaf because hubby loves that, or an enchilada casserole, because it's easy and yummy. Then he walked in the door. He said "Hmm, let's do something easy, like taco salad." I had a good amount of salad left over from Sunday, so we browned the meat, some onions, and mushrooms, threw it on the salad with black beans and cheese, and called it our meal. It was delicious.

Then we decided the kids probably wouldn't eat it, so we made them the traditional Valentine's Day meal- red heart pancakes.

But daddy is super cool and went all out, adding the last of the strawberries and some Cool Whip that we have no clue how it ended up in our freezer and we never eat. (Sorry, a bit blurry :(

While making dinner, we told the older two to keep the youngest happy, go play kitchen or something. I found the girls in the hallway, with a couch cushion, using it as a table.

That is her smile, saying "cheeeeese" with her eyes barely open, just like her mama. After dinner, my husband found this in the hallway. I'm unsure how we missed it prior to dinner, but our son learned a valuable lesson about how he IS old enough to make the mess, he IS old enough to clean it up.

And finally, here is baby girl yesterday in her Valentine's dress. She wore it yesterday because we went somewhere yesterday and didn't go anywhere today. ;-)

And wonderful sibling love.

A day in our life

Yesterday was a good day in our home. Actually, several have been lately. So I thought I'd blog about yesterday.

The older two kids slept until 7:45, and played nicely in Zach's room until 8:15, when I rolled out of bed. They played most of the morning, doing their own things. About 11:30, I got ready to work out, and daddy surprised us by walking in the door during lunch. I was so happy and thankful! The kids had been begging me to listen to an audio book we'd checked out from the library- The Polar Express. I know, it's a Christmas book. But Express starts with an "E". It was the book, with the CD along with it to listen to. I had no idea when I checked it out, but my kids LOVE LOVE LOVE listening to it. Sorry library, we may recheck this out and keep it the full 9 weeks haha! So daddy read that to them, then began reading them some other books, while I worked out. I was so thankful, because normally they're running around me, or whining the entire time I'm trying to get my exercise on.

Exercise? Oh yeah! I've been going about a week now. I started a fit club challenge with about 50 other moms through our MOPS group. I'm not in it to win it, but it's definitely giving me the motivation i need. I've been eating a LOT more fruits and vegetables, and feeling a lot healthier in just the week I've been eating better and working out.

Anyway, back to the day. At some point in the morning, my youngest kept throwing fits and tantrums. So bad that I had to go set her on her sister's toddler bed and walk away, letting her scream it out. Not sure what her problem was. At another point, my middle child got hurt, so I'm sitting in the den, holding her and comforting her while she's screaming in pain. (She wasn't that hurt, but she's all about "Go big") Baby sister comes in and sees me holding older sister, and LOSES it, trying to pull H out of my arms and throwing a complete tantrum when she didn't get her way. So I was left with 2 girls screaming and crying. My poor neighbors were probably about to call the police.

Speaking more of baby sister. She's 17 months old. She has started something new... tattling! How, you ask, does a 17mo tattle? She comes to me, pats me on the leg or arm saying "mom, mom, momma" several times until I look, and talks baby gibberish, and you can tell she's really upset, and points to where her siblings are. Yesterday she was pointing and I could tell complaining that H had shut the door to their room. Today it was that sister and brother took over the wii board and scale (Our pretend wii board for a kid to use while I work out... and no, the wii's not on, they're all just working out on their own at the moment, but it needs the wii board no matter what ;-)) I love that baby sister has such a spirit, and she cracks me up. Both girls are standing on the wii board at this very moment, leaning to the right, bending, stretching, etc. Love it! Oh, and baby sister I realize took her breakfast plate and put it on their little table, so she's going to grab a few cherrios in between. You need that extra energy to work out Good job baby girls!

Then there was the moment when I found all 3 kids in the bathroom, brushing their teeth. Zach had given out toothbrushes and toothpaste and even brushed baby sister's teeth for her, then let her brush her own... which lasted about 30 minutes as she carried her toothbrush throughout the house. The girl LOVES to brush her teeth.

I digress... So during naps, well, nap, only baby sister took one, the other two worked on a craft. Middle child gave me a pink oval sticker and said "Here mommy, this is for you. It's an (insulin) pump, a pink one, just like yours." So thoughtful! :) They both sat quietly at the table with foam Valentines stickers, and made Valentines for daddy (And decorated my candles). When daddy came home, they showed the cards to him, then said oh wait and ran away. I was making dinner and said "Daddy, go check on them please. It's too quiet." At that moment, they came out of Z's room. They had gotten wrapping paper, scissors and tape and wrapped their cards for him. They were sooo excited they told him to "Rip it open daddy!!!" It was precious to see their giving and excitement over giving to someone else. We then talked about how that was love (Since we're talking about love instead of a letter this week ;-))

Dinner came, and I attempted a new recipe- Enchilada Soup. Delicious, but super spicy. (I did make a few changes to the recipe of course.) The kids weren't fond of it since it was so spicy, so i said they could have a few more chips. My neighbor came up to talk to us for a minute. When she left, I realized the bag was gone! Silly kids. So we then cut up a pineapple for dessert, and watched as the kids all begged for more.

After dinner, we set about to quickly clean the house. And the kids did great! I set the timer and told them anything still on the den floor after 10 minutes was going to become mine for several days. They actually got it all cleaned up in 10 minutes! Happy momma! :) Bedtime went well, surprisingly without a fight from the oldest on wanting to sleep on the floor. Yes, our son wants to sleep on the floor all.the.time. Some times we let him, but not always. He tells us he doesn't sleep well on the floor, yet he wants to sleep there. Crazy kid!

Anyway, that was the highlights of yesterday. Never a dull moment, always something, often times sweet moments. Right now, they're all running through the house, and H is telling baby sister "Come on princess! Let's run fast!" If I say something like "Abby" Hannah corrects me and says "NO! She's Princess!" Thank you for treating your sister so special!

And I'll leave with this picture from the day before. Baby sister loves to climb, and pushed the chairs up to the bookcase. She saw the camera, so did her "Cheese"... which is more a "Eeeee" through her nose.

And a few of daddy with his sweet kids.