Valentines

We started our Valentines celebrations on February 1st. I took the advent I made for Christmas and turned it into our two week countdown...

The kids enjoyed doing the different activities and challenges such as hide 'n seek for hearts, cleaning up something for one of their siblings, reading love scriptures, playing valentines bingo, eating a "hearty" meal, making a secret valentine for someone, etc. But that certainly didn't distract us from our now traditional Love Mail Boxes. In fact, I tried to incorporate them into the count down challenges so that I wouldn't be the only one doing services and leaving notes for other members of the family again this year. And while I still didn't work out like I'd like (aka, I did most of the 'loving' again) there was a little improvement. The kids did do some stuff on their own. For example:
Tyler left this note for his siblings...
... read from bottom to top it says, "Tyler (signing who it was from) Brynn + Dylan you r nis (nice)" and including lots of hearts for love.
And Brynn left me this note...
... she had thrown a MAJOR tantrum before school and after spending a day thinking about it decided to come home and slip me an apology note for her awful behavior.
And I also found this sweet thank you note in my box from Tyler after he recognized that I had done something nice for him...
... ok this one isn't his best sounding out and I needed him to translate (he is spelling like he says the words and not how he hears us say them). But obviously it says 'mom'. And apparently the rest of that top line says 'thank you for fixing my'. And then the bottom line is 'police hat' (ex: see how police is pu and not pol).
So we had fun leading up to the holiday.
This year the kids had to decorate their Valentines boxes at home instead of doing them in class. Dylan was super excited about this and insisted on making one for himself too...

Here are some of the valentines the kids gave to their peers...

The Friday before Valentines our ward at Church did a Valentines dinner that included babysitting. PJ got out of taking me to that because he was on a 30hr on call shift at the hospital. And then he was on another one of those shifts on Valentines too. But he very sweetly came home the night before and decorate for the kids and I and camed armed with heart shaped donuts and strawberry milk and chocolate candy. So we got up real early before he left and had breakfast with him real quick - yep Kate enjoyed the chocolate for breakfast...

And since he wasn't home that night we invited some of our friends who also didn't have their daddys (both are deployed) to hang out with us - Kat Olsen & Girls and Kara & kids. We made the kids a simple dinner of heart shaped PB&J, heart shaped cheese, and strawberries with heart cake for dessert. And then us girls had yummy Chinese take out.

(I love how these kiddos have great friends who love them. I love how Dylan and Lorelai are holding hands and how Brynn is snuggling with Olivia.) The kids were wild and crazy after a day of fun and sweets. So we tried to wind them down with a show and when that didn't work they were all off to bed :) But it was a good night.