Be Mine, True Love!

The kids are always so excited to help decorate the house, I mean themselves, for holidays.  "Mom!  Take a picture of us!" said the girls as we pulled out our pink, red, and white.  Lucy also got all of her stuffed animals ready for V-Day by jazzing them up and she wanted to make all of our foods heart shaped, so we did quite a few things hearts.  :)

We made some cards to give to family members together out of Washi tape and had some fun with that.  The kids also loved filling out their Valentine's to give to their class mates.  We always buy the ones in the box after Valentine's day to give out the next year.  Emma gave out Ever After Highs that had little note pads with each one, and Cal did little animal ones with animal puppet stickers.  Lucy picked out Barbie ones for her preschool friends and Cov used Cal's leftover Harry Potter ones from last year.  We also gave out candy of course.

Our old little mailbox we used to pass each other Valentine's throughout February was getting broken, so Emma volunteered to make a new one.  Cute, huh?  It's so fun to give each other notes and cards and see what the kids do for us and each other.

We had our Annual Family Valentine Date the Monday before V-Day since we'd be out of town that weekend.  The theme this year was all about Conversation hearts.  So cute, so fun, but so yucky!  :P  But it made for a good theme.  Emma helped make the decorations and we had a blast coming up with phrases to stamp on our paper conversation hearts.  At one point we were laughing so hard!  It's nice to have a little side kick to do this with, rather than just doing it all myself.  She totally helped from planning activities and decorating to getting all ready for it!

The week before and the night of our date, we would go through "God's Converstaion Hearts" each night at dinner.  We'd read the phrase, the scripture, and talk about how it tied in and how much Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ do love us!

http://www.juliabettencourt.com/crafts/conversationheartscraft.html

On the menu, we had BBQ ribs which were tasty.  Cal particularly enjoyed them, ha ha!  The kids asked how that fit in with the theme and I wasn't sure but quickly thought and told them that ribs protect the heart, lol!  They rolled their eyes.  We had salad with heart cut out veggies, roasted heart potatoes, applesauce with conversation heart sprinkles, heart french bread and conversation heart punch.  Even Jazzy joined in, she's totally like a dog and likes to eat crumbs before we can sweep.

After enjoying our meal and some lively converation, we played some games, which got pretty competitive.  We played a conversation heart stacking game to see who could stack the most little and big conversation hearts.  We also played conversation hearts match up.  We just got several matching phrases and turned them over and played the matching game with them.  Simple and fun!

I always try to do a game for our date that promotes love within our family.  This one we had a bunch of paper hearts cut out, a different color for each person.  Everyone had to fill in the conversation heart for the person of that color if they were a conversation heart, what theirs would say.  Here’s what everyone came up with:

Dad (orange) – Cassanova (his to himself, lol!), Huge Hottie (Mom), Hard Worker (Emma), You are a Dad (Cal), Nice guy (Lucy).

Mom (yellow) – Angel Eyes (Dave), Meanest Mom (that was a joke for myself, that’s what the kids say sometimes), XOXO (Emma), You are a Mom (Cal), So Nice (Lucy)

Emma (Blue) – Smarty my Hearty (Dad), Sweetest Heart (Mom), Awesome (Her own), You are a Cheese Ball (Cal), I love you Hugs & Kisses (Lucy)

Cal (Red) – Cal me Anytime (Dad), Smiles (Mom), Sweet (Emma), Cool Man (his own) Macho Man (Lucy)

Lucy (Purple) – Sweety Petey (Dad), the Queen of Cute (Mom), Cheerful (Emma), You are a cheese doo (Cal)

Cov (Green) – Hoss is the Boss (Dad), Handsome little fella (Mom), Squeaky cleaner boy (Lucy)

We had a great time laughing and hopefully some of these helped boost their self-esteem.  ;)

We finished off the night by having our conversation heart pinata cake.  I've never made one of these but it was super fun.  Cov tried to grab at it on one corner, so it's a little bumpy, but it's okay.  We enjoyed it anyways!  It was a white cake with cream cheese frosting.

The next day, we heart attacked our neighbors, Tony & Angie.  We attached a bunch of our paper conversation hearts onto bamboo skewers and quietly went after dark and stuck them in their snow all over their front yard.  It looked cute and I hope it was a fun surprise for them!  

Lucy and Covey had a fun Valentine's Day party at preschool.  The made little puzzle magnets, ate treats, exchanged valentines, of course, and just played.  Such fun little guys!  I also got to go help out at Emma's school party a bit.  They played a fun heart game where they had instructions on certain hearts to find around the room and Emma won!  She's cute!  We watched Ezrie that day and she had a blast with us and the other big kids, too.  I missed out on Cal's party this year, I'm just going to have to alternate whose class I help with instead of trying to hit them all now.  He had a fun V-Day party though.

What a great time we had on our date.  We always look forward to this sweet tradition!

For our Valentine's date, Dave and I went to Ruth's Diner up Immigration Canyon.  It was a nice night and a cute little place.  We enjoyed the conversation and the yummy food.  It's fun to just be alone sometimes!  Dave and I agreed we wouldn't get any gifts for each other this year, but Dave made a super cute homemade card, and I put together a little Spa gift basket for us to use together and made a card.  I'm so blessed to be married to a man who honors me and honors the Lord!  He helps me laugh and have fun.  He helps me to relax and remember I don't have to have everything perfect.  He tells me each night how beautiful I am and is always telling me I'm the best wife ever (though that's far from the truth, to him it is the truth).

On Valentine's Day, we were able to go to the Care Center where Grandma Di & Grandpa Scott help each week doing Sacrament Meeting services, FHE, and help out when needed with other events.  The kids made Valentine's that day with construction paper, crayons, stickers, foam shapes, and jewel and wrote sweet messages.  We went and took them and some candy and oranges to the residents who thought the kids were so sweet.  They were all special and it was fun to go there to meet these neat people.  The kids loved their robot cat they had there and cracked up about that.  

I participated in the #LoveOneAnother social media event leading up to Valentine's Day sponsored by the Church.  It was a great challenge to focus on just one way to love others each day and really helped me through some times when I was feelings some resentment or stressed out to look to others and how I can love them in that thing.  "As I have loved you, love one another."  That's a pretty huge request, the Lord loved perfectly and He asked us to do the same.  It's a lot easier when we focus on one way at a time we can love more perfectly.

I'm thankful for my family.  I love them with all the love my heart can muster!  I am also thankful for my Heavenly Father and my Savior Jesus Christ who share their perfect love for us each day!  "for God so loved the world that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."  Now, that's true love!