Love Notes

November-December 2011

One of the best ways that our family communicates is through leaving notes. LeRoy and I started this in the beginning of our marriage and it has been passed on to our kids as well.

One of my favorite things to do is surprise my kids at school with random sweet notes. After 1st trimester grades came in and Derek was so proud of his scores I decided to make a bigger deal about it by taking him a poster to school.

He told me that his friends thought it was pretty cool and if something gets friend approval on top of parent praise it has to be good.

December was a hectic month with numerous trips into town, Idaho Falls, school plays and concerts and LeRoy and I still trying to squeeze in our weekly date. Justin was the babysitting hero for that month. It was fun to surprise him at school with a thank you paycheck.

I have a white board in my office for reminder notes. One day I noticed a new note that Justin had written. I love seeing his humor come through, even on a boring shopping list.

It is so rewarding when the kids start leaving notes for me. I love kindergarten for that reason. Nathan has been through several notebooks writing notes to all of us and many of them say the same thing but it's good practice, both for writing and for expressing love.

I guess texting language is really just reverting back to our kindergarten skills.

Any time Vivien closes one closet door or her bedroom door the other closet door poofs open. It was really bugging her so I suggested we find the magnet monkeys to put around the handles so that both doors would stay closed. We looked for them for a few minutes but then had to go somewhere. While the older kids were at school Nathan determined that he would find the monkeys for Vivien. I didn't know the outcome until a few days later when Vivien showed me this picture that she had taken.

From Nathan to Vivien

These monkeys are for you.

I found it in the animal closet under the stairs.

Love Nathan

For the year and a half that Erika worked at Wendy's I would leave a sticky note for her every night that I wasn't up when she got home. She ended up saving them all on her wall. That to me said that she appreciated them but she has never been one to leave notes in return. I can remember exactly three notes from her and they have all been left during this last two years. I found my first note from Erika early on the morning that I ran the Pocatello Half Marathon. She wished me luck and said she was proud of me. That totally made my day and thoughts of Erika pushed me through that race. The second was left last spring when I was out really late playing Bunco with my girlfriends and it simply said "you are late for curfew. Good night."

The last note is the one that really caught me off guard. It happened to come when there were no significant events taking place. She went to bed early one night and later when I went to bed I found this note on my pillow.

Erika is not one to share her feelings so this came as quite a surprise. I will treasure it forever.