Monday, February 24, 2014

Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day seemed like it happened a long time ago!  I hope you all had a fun day.  I enjoy days like Valentine's Day-I love how the everyday normal is switched up by doing fun, special things.  

The day before (and the prior evening) was when it snowed over 15 inches here.  The kids were kind of sad that they didn't go to school on Valentine's Day, but all of them had their class parties at later dates.  That morning we had cinnamon sticks and hot chocolate for breakfast.  The kids had fun building me hearts out of Duplos and Legos.  I enjoyed them! Cal did a great job with this big heart, and little hearts surrounding it.
Feb 14 2014

They also had fun playing for hours outside.  They are at a neighbors house in the following pictures with their little snow forts.
Feb 13

Feb 14 2014 (2)

Feb 14 2014 (3)

This is a tiny snowman with huge sunglasses on. It was SO bright out that day that I wore my sunglasses around outside.  It was such a warm day too--great day to play in the snow!
Feb 14 2014 (5)

That night our friends Jenny and Dan and their family came over.  We had dinner together and talked.  The kids played a little bit and watched a movie and some of the Olympics.  It was great having them here.  One drawback to where we live is we can't see our other friends as often as we'd like! This is how the kids crashed that night.....
Feb 14 2014 (4)

Speaking of the Olympics, it was SO fun watching them!  It would have been fun to watch more of them.  Seeing all of those amazing athletes is definitely inspiring.  My friend Brittany posted something about Noelle Pikus-Pace showing her wearing her young women's medallion! So cool! 

For our Valentine's "date" we went out to eat at a bbq place close by.  A teacher had given me a gift card to the restaurant as a thanks for helping out with copies and such.  It was fun using that!  We had about $0.60 leftover on the gift card and just left it there because we didn't know what to do with it.  I had a little extra bbq that I wanted to take home.  I boxed it up and then completely forgot to take it.  Oh well.  After dinner we did a quick stop at Michael's to pick up some things for young women's and then headed over to a local high school for their production of Oklahoma.  One of our young women was the main character-Laury.  I enjoyed seeing her perform.  She did a great job.  Here are some bad cell phones pictures at the high school.  We saw several people there that we knew, which was really fun.  My friend Hannah snapped a few pictures for us.  I forgot to bring my camera that night!
Feb 15 2014 Oklahoma

Feb 15 2014 Oklahoma (2)

Just for fun, here is Haley earlier that morning. Every Saturday (sometimes Fridays) my kids rotate through different lists of jobs.  One of Haley's that day was to clean the upstairs bathroom.  I thought it was cute that she wore her sunglasses for her jobs.
Feb 15 2014

Every year my mom sends Valentine cards to her kids and grandkids along with some money to buy treats for the grandkids. I had a lot of fun picking stuff out!  I received her cards on Valentine's Day but was too busy to do anything with it, so I waited till Tuesday to buy some things for the family and the kids. (Mainly because that is when I was going into Harrisonburg.  And school was two hours late that morning!)  I loved that the candy was on sale because I bought it after Valentine's Day! I also bought some ice cream with the money and we had that last night for our Family Home Evening treat.  Thanks Mom!
Feb 18 2014

Next year Elden will be bringing home goodies from his Valentine class party at school.  So bittersweet.  More like 99.9% bitter and the 0.1%, um, sweet? I guess the 0.1% is the part of me that doesn't want to homeschool.  I am sad he'll be heading off to school!  Kindergarten registration is in March.  AH!

Growing up I remember my dad leaving each of us kids a Little Debbie treat along with a Valentine card for each of us. Lee continues the tradition.  This year I cut out some hearts and he wrote a personalized note to each child.  During the day on Valentine's day I went out the back door, left the treats (Little Debbie heart shaped treats) and the notes at the front door, knocked and ran. I actually slipped going around the corner. They all thought Lee had left them at the front door.  I thought it was funny because he was at Harrisonburg that day, and it was in the middle of the day that I did this. 

Normally I don't make requests on Valentine's day, but I did this year.  I told Lee all I wanted was some chocolate bars from Aldi.  I LOVE their milk chocolate bars with almonds!  I really like their plain milk chocolate and dark chocolate too.  I wasn't sure how he would get them as we don't live by an Aldi. He thought of a great idea...my sister Lois picked them up for him and mailed them to our house.  Lee said something was coming in the mail and truthfully I thought it might be an Ina Garten cookbook (I love her cookbooks!).  I was really surprised when I found out that the package contained four chocolate bars!  YUM!  This is all that is left of the four...boo hoo....
Feb 25 2013

This is the Valentine card he got me.  We are reading a marriage book together, Love & Respect by Emerson Eggerichs. (We are making very slow progress I might add.  I thought it would be fun to read it together and talk about it while reading it.  I keep checking it out from the library because we aren't making much headway!).  Anyway, if you read the book, you'll get the card (and you won't have to read very far into the book to get the joke!).  It was pretty funny.  Lee had slipped in a handmade note so I didn't notice the front at first because I just opened the card right away.  It was a fun weekend!
Feb 25 2014

2 comments:

andyandsteph said...

Fun Valentine's Day! How do you make your cinnamon sticks? They look so yummy!

Smith Clan said...

I love your kid's snow fort!! And I'm glad you had such a fun Valentine's celebration. This Hannah girl seems like she can't take a picture to save her life. It was fun seeing you guys at Oklahoma!