February 22, 2015

valentine's

A whole day to celebrate love--Valentine's day is the best.


It was even better this year since sweet, sweet and loving E surprised me with something each day to create Valentine's week! He came home from work with balloons, candy, flowers, or other small gifts. He took me out to dinner one of the weeknights. By the time Saturday came around, I was feeling pretty loved. ♥



We love celebrating as a family on Valentine's day. We filled the day to the brim. We started with heart shaped pancakes. Kyler and I passed out Valentine's to everyone in our family. I gave them the traditional candy bar cookies and love notes and Kyler set up little clues to have us find our valentine's from him (what a big sweetheart!!). Kacin went around and gave everyone extra hugs and kisses.

We talked to our kids about how Valentine's day is a day to celebrate love and how you can always have a good time no matter what you are doing as long as you are with people you love and have a good attitude. We had to give them that spiel before we told them what we were doing for the day. Ha!

We planned a fun day. But I also know my kids well and I knew that there would be some grumblings about a few of the things. Which is ridiculous. Who grumbles about the zoo? At least one of ours does.

We might have been winging this a little, but we told the kids we had four things planned. They would find out the activities as we went along. And it would spell out LOVE.



So "L" was for Lots and lots of animals! We went to the zoo to see Lions and Ligers and lots of other lovely animals.








Next we went to Kyler's swim meet. His first swim meet ever! After only 6 weeks on the team he participated and raced in 3 events. It was quite the learning experience for him. We are sooo proud of him and how he stuck it out to the end, never gave up, and tried his best. He is an amazing, courageous boy.








"O" was for Oooooooh, that tastes yummy! (I told you we were winging it here!) During the 4 hour swim meet. Eric and some of the kids went to a bakery and picked out some treats to share.

Kacin's guesses were much more creative than what E and I came up with, but our "V" was for Very good dinner. We went to Dick's Drive-in for the first time ever.

"E" was for Everyone plays a game. We took a raincheck on that one because the swim meet went longer than we expected and we were all exhausted when we got home. We played our game of Hide and seek in the dark on Sunday night.

A whole Valentine's day of LOVE with my family is just the best.

After the kids were in bed, we got together with a few friends for games. E made the best domino tower ever.






Until it fell.


Which was a metaphor that all good things must come to an end and Valentine's day/week was over.

Exception to the metaphor: our love. That will never end. ♥ :)