Sent with love

This years Valentine's Day theme had to do with sending love.  We loved getting Valentine's together (yep, the boxed kind this year...nothing homemade) and sending them to the family.  I especially loved the vintage ones we got on Amazon.  So cute!  The weekend before V-Day, we also made cookies to take to the Primary kids, all the Primary teachers, and some neighbors.  I made this red hot buttercream frosting found at http://www.madeeveryday.com/2013/02/red-hot-buttercream-frosting.html/ , which was amazing with our sour cream sugar cookies!  We also did some plain ones with sprinkles for those who aren't cinnamon fans.  Dang, they were tasty!  And Cov was the sweetest little delivery boy with me and brought love & cheer to all we visited.

The older two kids were so excited because for the first time ever, they got to make their own Valentine boxes!  Emma came up with a Darth Vader box and Callahan wanted to make a football one.  I love how they turned out and that they did them with hardly any help, yes!!!  Lucy made hers in her class.  She made a giant heart envelope.  I love that it had "Mom Dad I love you" written on it. They also picked out Valentine's carefully for their classes.  Emma had jungle animal ones with little hand puppets, Cal gave out Batman ones, and Lucy had little water color valentines to give out.

We also made little bow & arrows and valentines for the people at the nursing home for Cub Scouts.  Cal's been playing with his a ton!  I thought that would be a perfect craft for crazy little boys and it was a hit!

Dave & I had our Valentine's Date the weekend before Valentine's Day.  We went to the "Dance & Dessert" put on by Jack's Big Band of Scobey.  It was a benefit for the Beacon Community foundation, who raises money for different community projects.  This time it was to raise money to help send kids to music camp this summer.  The band is so talented and we have some friends and acquaintances in it.  It was great hearing the music and visiting with others and doing a little dancing...though neither of us are very good.  We had a great time watching some of the older generations cut a rug, though!  My Dave is so good to me.  He's so kind, good-humored, handy, hard working, sensitive, a great dad, and fun to be with.  I'm glad he's mine forever, I love him!  And we love this community.  Though small, it is so neat so many great things go on here, it's a talent treasure trove and everyone is so friendly.  We had several people who hadn't met us yet so they came up and introduced themselves and treated us as if we've been lifelong friends.  What a great night!

We got up on the big day and made little heart pies for breakfast and packed a little bit of fun in their lunch boxes.  Emma and Cal have their own love stories unfolding at school lately.  It was so hilarious because Emma's been telling us about Cal's little admirers at school lately and teasing our "lady snatcher" about it.  Many of the girls in his class ask Emma at recess "Where's Cal?" or tells her "[She] has a crush on Callahan!"  Cal just denies it and gets red in the face.  Well, Cal got her back on Valentine's Day.  He told a boy named Ty in Emma's class that Emma likes him (she does talk about him an awful lot...).  So later in the day, Ty went up to Emma and asked if she'd be his Valentine.  Emma said "Huh?" And Ty responded "You have a crush on me, right?  That's what your brother told me!"  Emma just kind of responded in the negative, haha!  At least he likes her too, or he wouldn't have asked her to be his Valentine.

Most of the day while the kids were at school, Cov and I did our Valentine's themed mommy preschol and were busy getting our family Valentine's date ready.  Cov is so funny and keeps asking me lately "Can I kiss you on the lips?"  I usually tell him to kiss me on the cheeks, but sometimes we do give little kisses to each other on the lips.  Then he said he wanted to marry me.  Lucy said "Cov, too bad, Mommy's already in love with Daddy!" Haha!  This boy is funny and we enjoy our days together.  We made rice krispy treats, decorated and got all of the stuff we needed for our activities together.  Cov was excited to use the new spatula Grandma Di sent us, along with some cute cookie cutters, mini cards, and puzzles.  We put the little "envelopes" we made together on the doors so we could leave love notes for each other.  We also put Daddy's "hot air ballon" gift together.  That was the gift I gave him.  Daddy came home for lunch and brought me chocolate covered strawberries and a cute card he made.  When the kids came home, they told me all about their parties and day's events, checked out their loot and read the cards, traded a few things, ate a little too much candy.  Then we read some Valentine's day books and the kids made up some games with balloons.  I love how many games you can come up with just using balloons!  I finished up with dinner preparations.  Then Daddy got home and got the meat grilled.

Then we started our "Sent with Love" Valentine's date.  We decorated with red, blue & white and had mailboxes and letters and hearts all around.  We had dinner first - menu consisted of grilled salmon, strawberry spinach salad, garlic jasmine rice, asparagus fries, and Sprite with berry punch hearts in it.  It was delicious and the kids all loved it!  We haven't had salmon in a while, because a couple of our kids didn't like it the last time.  But it was a hit.  Then we got ready to deliver treats and a card to an elderly man that lives near.  After that, the kids got to decorate their own pens or pencils with stickers, washi tape, artificial flowers, ribbons, etc.  They turned out pretty cute.  Cal said his looked like a hula skirt.  Next, we did a Mad Libs type of valentine letter.  Everyone giggled a lot over our silly answers.  After that, it was time for our stamp designing contest.  I gave everyone a large blank stamp and told them to decorate a stamp with a Valentine's theme.  They were pretty cute & fun! Then we ate our dessert - rice krispy letters.  We put white fondant on top to look like envelopes with little candy hearts.  Lucy exclaimed: "Oh my!  These are so cute!"  Last, we did little "I Love you Because" letter prompts.  We each took turns filling in the blanks on each others letters.  At this point some of the kids were getting tired, restless and ready for bed.  So not everyone filled each others out.  And we didn't really have Cov participate in this one.  Here's what they all said:

Dad -
I love the way you...play/are so happy/make funny jokes/type on your computer when you're done with work
I love it when you...play/stay up/make funnies/go to work and then I miss you
I could not live without you because...you are dad/you are the best dad/you are my favorite person/you're my dad!
I love to go with you to...play/Utah/somewhere alone/drives in the car
I am crazy about you because...I like you/you are nice/you're so hot/you're happy always
I want to go with you to...Washington State/Utah/Hee-ven/Rawlins

Mom -
I love the way you...smile/sing/Mommy
I love it when you...play/sing to me and scratch my back/make food
I could not live without you because...you are nice/you are the best mom/I would die
I love to go with you to...the pool/to get ice cream/the Bahamas
I am crazy about you because...you're nice/you are soooo nice!/you're lovely
I want to go with you to...Forever/vacation/Hee-ven (inside joke...I died when Dave wrote the same thing!!)

Emma -
I love the way you...Nice/are sweet/play/help others, fart (Dave was teasing the kids about their potty humor that night, and so he decided to show Emma...Emma cracked up when she read all of his silly answers.  He also wrote some serious ones for her.)
I love it when you...Giggle/are nice to me/giggle/fart
I could not live without you because...you're too sweet/you're a nice, nice girl/you laugh at my jokes/I like smelly farts
I love to go with you to...family vacations/Billings/anywhere/the gas store
I am crazy about you because...you are very kind/you do basketball practice/you rock/you smell terrible
I want to go with you to...the mall/Wyoming again/the top of the world/the fart expo

Cal -
I love the way you...are dumb - jk (Emma and Cal have a little sibling rivalry going on always)/help decorate/are always smiling/ cartwheel
I love it when you...play chess with me/say "Apple strudel" (another inside joke)/are sweet/listen
I could not live without you because...you are the only one that plays karate matches with me/you're my brother/you're so spunky/you are nice
I love to go with you to...McDonalds/play Bingo/outdoor activities like hiking - you're always ahead of the pack/hotels
I am crazy about you because...you do chess well/you're my brother/ you're a cute, special boy/ you're crazy
I want to go with you to...No where/Hawaii/Washington/Kilimanjaro

Lucy -
I love the way you... tell stories/burps/play with toys/laugh
I love it when you...smile/play/play/burps the alphabet
I could not live without you because...you make me happy/you're the best/I love you/ you're my favorite sissy and sibling
I love to go with you to... the park/the gym/the park/the pool
I am crazy about you because...you're nice/you're so funny, you're my favorite
I want to go with you to...Disneyland, Wyoming, the pool, Disney park

Cov -
I love the way you...laugh/play/dance around/laugh (like Gus Gus)
I love it when you...play/do silly faces/are funny/smile
I could not live without you because...I can't/you're so happy/you're too funny/you're funny
I love to go with you to...here/the pool/the house/the hotel
I am crazy about you because...you're awesome/you are so funny/you are too funny/you're crazy
I want to go with you to...Anywhere/the park/McDonald's Heaven

Then we gave the kids their cards and little present.  This year it was new jeans for everyone since everyone's are getting holes in them.  They were actually excited.  Then it was off to bed, as it was already past bedtime.  It's nice that Emma is picking up on things now and starting to be more appreciative of the things we do for them.  At one point, one of our kids was struggling during the party and Emma said "Be nice and do what you're asked.  Mom spent a lot of time putting this together!"  Sweet thing.  It was such a lovely day!