Our Valentine's Day

Today was a fairly normal day, even though it was a holiday. Mondays are always hard for us. We have to leave the house around 1:30 for piano lessons, and on most days we eat lunch around that time, plus we don't finish our schoolwork until 3:00 or so. We even started at 7:45 this morning (since it was Valentine's Day and I knew the children had Valentines to exchange), and we still did not finish school before piano time. Then after piano we went to the city park to run, because it was a beautiful day! The temperature was 68 and sunny. Such a pretty day to be outside. Even Sam and Leah each ran 1/2 mile today.

Thankfully, we did some Valentine celebrating and crafting on our snow day last week.....

We made cinnamon red homemade play-doh. It smelled delicious!

Clay kneading his dough

Leah and Sam with theirs

Olivia and Julie joined in the fun too!

Can you see the heart indention?

Then we made Valentines for friends and family. They made a big mess, but they also produced some beautiful Valentines. Some we mailed, some were delivered yesterday at church, and some were exchanged this morning. I love handmade Valentines! Each of the children made fabulous Valentines for Jimmy and me. Heirlooms!

the Valentine-making mess

Sam, working hard on a Valentine

Jimmy gave each of the children some chocolate candy tonight, and earlier today I gave each of them a fun, but practical or needed, Valentine gift. These gifts included Twist Up Pencils (now everybody has their own set), a new Guess Who? game (our old one had soooo many pieces torn or missing, and they play that game all the time), and for Olivia--an assortment of socks for her to make sock animals out of.

Jimmy and I did not exchange chocolate, because we are both watching our caloric intake. Even though we are both training for a marathon, we have both recently started making a conscious effort to reduce our total calories and make sure that what we are eating is healthy! So....no chocolate for us. (My mother-in-law did send us each a bag of M&Ms--my all time favorite candy, but I only ate 7 M&Ms---about 25 calories worth!)

Sweet Julie crocheted the sweetest gift for Jimmy and me:

no calorie chocolate candy!

Happy Valentine's Day!