Still A Car Guy

Lee has furthered Isaac’s mechanic aspirations by letting him help change the oil on his car.

Isaac is still talking about how he “fixed daddy’s car”. 

Actually, Lee’s real intent is to teach Isaac so that he can pass off such chores as soon as possible…

Rock On!

Isaac and Grace rockin’ with the karaoke machine.

Complete with upside down sunglasses!

Grace kept the theme going all day long by sporting a rockin’ outfit. 

It helped her keep her groove on.

Once she was done, she had to organize all her accessories…of course.

My Loves

Valentine’s Day couldn’t be anything but awesome when you have these kids to love.

 

Total bonus when they love YOU!

Even better with this hot husband.

Lee with his traditional heart shaped chocolate chip cookie.  That’s all he wants for Valentine’s Day, 14 years and counting…

Valentine’s Day didn’t need to get any better than that, but we added a few fun things anyway.  We started our  celebration with a special breakfast. 

Emma found heart earrings in her mailbox.

Isaac and Grace got stickers.  They immediately went to work plastering them in the little notebooks they got earlier in the week.

We had our traditional “romantic” dinner later that evening, complete with a heart-shaped pizza from Papa Murphy’s.

Love them!

After dinner we played some Conversation Hearts games. 

Steal My Heart:

Tower of Hearts:

Love Story:

Heart Drop:

Only a few hearts were eaten during the fun!

After Isaac and Grace went to bed we played Hearts Yahtzee and ate homemade, heart-shaped pizookies.  Oh yum!

It certainly was a good Valentine’s Day!

Go Ahead…Be A Heart Breaker

It was really hard to top the Valentines Emma gave out last year.

We saw several fun ideas on the internet, but finally settled on these:

But then Emma (and I) started getting a little nervous about passing them out at school (especially to the boys).  So, we started thinking and looking around again.  We found these and Emma fell in love.  They were fun and very easy to make. 

We really wanted to sew them, but the hearts were too small to do it easily.  If I were to make them again I would make the hearts bigger.  Stapling was probably easier and quicker though…

They turned out great and Emma was happy to give them out.  Her friends had fun “breaking” Emma’s hearts to find the candy inside.

We still printed a few of the first Valentines for family.  We also put some to good use as tags for the homemade Hearts Yahtzee games we made for her teachers. 

It’s Raining Hearts

Gracie so loved all the Valentine hearts and preparations around our house that she would point to the hearts and say “it’s raining hearts”.  She got that from her current favorite book The Day It Rained Hearts by Felicia Bond.  She especially loved that we did a little art project with out playgroup based on the book, and then was even more thrilled when the librarian read that book at story time last week.  She had every right to be excited about it all, it WAS raining hearts at our house!

All three kiddos were happy with the fun notes and gifts in their mailboxes each morning.  It’s funny how simple, cheap things can make them happy… like heart-shaped silly straws.

We decorated heart cookies to share with friends and neighbors (and to eat…).  Emma, Isaac and Grace were excited to use the sprinkles they got in their mailboxes that morning to decorate their cookies with.

The best part of our Valentine’s Day prep for me and Lee was to go out for our Valentine’s date the Friday night before.  We used some gift cards we had to El Gaucho (thank you Rust’s!).  It was delicious, we were impressed with the flaming swords and the extremely tender steaks.  We also enjoyed the good company of Peter and Brenna, thanks guys!  We went home totally stuffed and ready to celebrate with our family on Valentine’s Day.

All You Need Is Love

Emma asked us every Monday night during Family Home Evening through the month of January when we were going to decorate our traditional Valentine’s containers.  We had to keep telling her to wait until it was actually February.  That night finally came and she was thrilled.  We decorated mailboxes this year.

Isaac and Grace joined us for the first time and they got into the decorating just as much as Emma did.

Grace was extremely proud of her final creation.

Isaac was obsessed with the circles inside the O’s.  His mailbox was covered with them, as was his face.

Emma painted fun messages on the outside and inside of her box.

After we decorated our mailboxes we got started on love notes for each other to put in them.

The best part of our evening may have been eating the yummy (and cute) cookies Emma made for us the night before.

After the babies went to bed, we had our “big kid” lesson with Emma.  Lee and I have to give a presentation later this week on The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman so we did a simplified, trial run on Emma.  She was interested in it and really understood it.  She paid attention to what our love languages are and has made an effort this week to show us love in our respective languages.  What a great kid we have! 

This is my favorite Valentine’s Day traditions.  It’s fun to give and receive inexpensive gifts and love notes throughout the week.  Such a great way to show love to each other.  It’s been especially fun to see how excited Isaac and Grace have been this year to see what is in their mailboxes each morning.