Valentines Day

I love Valentine's Day! I have so many fun memories from growing up and celebrating - candy at our places at the breakfast table, finding Valentines from Mommy and Daddy hidden all over the house (and even in my school stuff, too!)! I still remember opening my math book in college to find a Valentine from my dad hiding in the pages!
For me, Valentine's Day is a fun family holiday that gives us an opportunity to celebrate each other. Consequently, it is one of the"bigger" holidays that we celebrate at our house.
We celebrated over a three-day weekend this year, since Valentine's was actually on Sunday (not the best day time-wise for our family). We began Saturday night with our annual Valentine's dinner, compete with china table settings, candles and our traditional Valentines' chicken dish that Matt first made for me in college. Then, the next morning (Valentine's morning), the kids came down to find candy at their places (they especially love this tradition!). This morning, we did our annual scavenger hunt, where we send the kids all over the house to gather clues and eventually find some special new "treasure" hidden for them. We also tried something new this year that I want to remember and keep doing.
Last week, I set a little basket full of construction paper hearts and markers on the table and explained that it is our "I love you" basket. Everyone could write a note to someone else, telling them that they love them and a reason why and then put it back into the basket. It was especially neat to see the girls stealing opportunities to sit down and write hearts to everyone else! This morning, after we ate breakfast, Matt read out each heart and then handed them out to the kids. You should have seen their faces when they received hearts and when he read a heart that they had written to someone else! It was a really neat time!
So, usually this is all in one day, just not this year. And, as far and Matt and I are concerned, Feb. 15 has always been the day we celebrate, ever since we started dating!

Our "fancy" dinner table. Liam wanted to sing "happy birthday" since there were candles, so I had to keep explaining to him that these are not birthday candles, just fancy ones. :)

The "I Love You" basket and (below) some of the notes that the girls wrote



And the faces as we read and handed out the notes this morning:

Collecting clues for the scavenger hunt

A successful find!