XOXOXO

Valentine's Day actually started out as Valentine's Week last Monday. For family home evening we learned how XOXO came to mean kisses and hugs and we learned about St. Valentine. By the end the kids were teasing us that we were having a Jewish/Catholic FHE night. Then we made homemade valentines to send to some of our friends.

I learned several years ago to let go of any visual expectations I had in my mind when I realized that I had 6 boys in on the crafting and since then I have come to love the time we spend together during the creating process. They are clever and caring even if it doesn't come across in craft store beauty.

We also decorated our own envelopes to leave in the basket on the table for the week. The basket was full of paper hearts to write our own love notes to leave in each other's envelopes. This experiment turned out much better than I had hoped and I had to copy and cut more hearts for the basket.

After a weeks worth of love notes Valentine's morning finally came. Erika's comment at breakfast was "I've given up on ever looking good in Christmas and Valentine's day pictures". She loves it! LeRoy came to the table with his Tigger sweatshirt on so Hyrum and Nathan ran to the dress up clothes to get their Tigger costumes so that they could match dad. It may not have been red, pink and heartshaped but this was a sure Valentine for LeRoy. Those boys love their daddy!

While the older kids were in school and the little boys were down for naps I did my Valentine workout. Stringing 5 full skeins of yarn over and under and between and through is very tiring! My favorite part is the staircase!

About 10 minutes after I finished three sets of missionaries showed up for P-day. LeRoy had informed me the night before that they were coming to play pool, ping-pong and board games. I'm happy to entertain the missionaries but I wasn't going to skip out on our 8 year tradition so they would just have to Catherine Zeta-Jones/Agent 99 their way through my yarn lasers. The four sister missionaries thought is was a fun tradition (seriously, high pitched oohs and aahs) so they didn't seem to mind holding their skirts as modestly as they could while weaving their way in crouching tiger stealth to get to the basement.

Nathan and Hyrum woke up about an hour before the older kids were to get home from school but I was ready for that. They thought I was the coolest mom ever (okay, they didn't say so but I'm going to pretend it anyway) when I had the travel dvd player set up with Leapfrog Alphabet and we all sat on Nathan's bed like we were at the movies. It lasted just long enough and when we opened the bedroom door to go out and they saw all the strings they didn't care what they were for, they only saw a jungle to tame. Getting from their bedroom to the kitchen took about 10 minutes since they both insisted on doing it all alone. We made it just in time for the others to walk in.

I took more video than pictures this year so this doesn't quite capture the thrill of the game. There were more "Holy cow, mom! This is impossible! How am I supposed to get over that!" comments than ever before. I did try to make it more challenging and they loved it. The only rule is that they can't use scissors so some of the tight spots at the end are pretty darn tricky with a ball of yarn.

While I was putting the finishing touches on the very pink, red, carby dinner and Nathan, Derek, Justin and LeRoy were playing was with their cupid shooters Hyrum climbed up to help himself to the heart shaped pancakes.



The others finally joined us and we ate to our hearts content. The boys' lip smacking love for the strawberry-yogurt-cobbler was all the thanks I needed. Washing it down with pink milk gave the final gulping touches to our Valentine meal. The night was complete as we read a weeks worth of Valentine love notes that had been left in our envelopes.


A couple of final notes:

Erika received a dozen red roses at school today.
I think he likes her!

Nathan received a Spiderman projector flashlight in his gift box at the end of his string. Though he thought that the Spidey pictures that were projected onto the wall were cool he was even more impressed that he could hide in his dark bedroom and read his books with his flashlight. Yes, he also tried it after he was tucked into bed for the night.

Happy Heart Day to all and to all a good night!