After all this snow, Valentine's was necessarily a low-key event this year. The Valentine's banquet at church got rescheduled and we've been snowed in for three days straight! Luckily, I picked up some goodies back when they first stocked up in stores (you know, back on New Year's Day haha).
We started off early with heart-shaped pancakes. It's easy to cut them with cookie cutters and they were a big hit! But of course, the big kids were too distracted by their baskets of goodies to eat. (Not Gunnar. He is never too distracted to eat.)
And coffee. Always coffee.
Finn brought his little plastic heart to Matt to help him open it and said, "What's it got? Love?" Finn set right to work eating candy for breakfast.
Kenna set right to work using her stickers to make me a beautiful "picture of a family" as she put it... including sharks, fish, sea stars... and a cow and two bunnies.
Then we sat for a bit and "made stickers" with Mommy's sticker-maker aka: label maker.
The goodie basket aftermath.... the books we gave them have memory verses and the words to "Father We Thank Thee," a song my Grannie has been singing to me since I was a little girl and that we sing at bedtime to the kids. I'd never seen any proof before that the song existed at all outside of Grannie's very creative imagination, so I was so excited to find it!
Once everything was left unattended, a sneaky little bandit capitalized on the opportunity to hijack some candy. And some pancakes.
Matt decided this year to make my valentine, and then proceeded to torture me by not giving me any hints whatsoever for almost two weeks. When he came out of our attic 'workroom' with this, I was so happy!
I love that he understands how much a handmade gift means to me. I think it's my love language. He has just the right amount of sentimentality- he carved our initials in a tree at our first house together, but we had to move away from the house. We haven't lived anywhere since then that was truly ours long-term, so he made a portable love carving for me!
The commercials would have you believe that Valentine's Day, and love entirely, is about candlelight dinners and jewelry and 'sexy chocolate,' whatever that is... and while those things are nice, after 10 years with my valentine I know that it's so much more.
Love is a little girl who wants nothing as badly as she wants some undivided attention from her Mommy to make a craft or play Barbies.
It's a little boy who almost never sits still but comes and holds my hand anytime it is by my side.
It's another little boy who only has eyes for his Momma, whose little grin lights up when he sees me from across the room.
Love is a man who has loved me for 10 years even when I'm not lovely. Who knows my heart when the words come out all wrong. Who remembers the important things even if they aren't being done my way... who forgives... who compromises... who has promised to love me the rest of my life.
And, most importantly, love is a Father God who loved us first and shows us how and enables us to love when we'd rather be selfish, when things are hard, when the sickness and heartache and bitterness want to take over.
I'm so grateful for my precious three and the man who loves us.
Happy Valentine's Day!
Happy Valentine's Day!
