Happy Valentine’s Day!

Today is one of my favorite holidays, believe it or not. I never used to care much about Valentine’s Day, until I was teaching. It is a seriously fun holiday for kids and adults alike! Valentine’s Day incorporates love, chocolate, hugs, kisses, and NO STRESS like other holidays! And no matter whether you have a “Valentine” or not, you have people in your life you love and showing love, especially with kids, is just FUN! When I was teaching, Valentine’s Day always fell around the 100th day of school, and being that I taught lower elementary, we always celebrated the 100th day of school in a BIG way. My favorite thing to do was to write a 100-word Valentine for my class and use the little conversation hearts as some of the words. The kids LOVED it!

Now that I have my own kids, we have lots of fun on Valentine’s. When they were little, we often had friends over. The kids would all wear red, pink, or white and we’d decorate cookies and the kids would exchange Valentines. It was pretty much a way for all my crafty friends & I to use up some of our creative energies and see who could have the most clever Valentine to hand out. :) But we had fun! Now the girls make their own Valentines and we almost always have chocolate fondue on Valentine’s Day together as a family. I’m not sure if we’re doing that tonight or not…we had fondue night with our small group from church last night, so we’ll have to see how tonight goes. At any rate, it’s a fun holiday and there’s always lots of good chocolate and goodies around, so I’m happy. :)

Here are some pictures of the oldest 3 making their Valentines for their classmates.

Oh, and did I mention that I have my very own incredible Valentine with whom I am madly in love? Yes, there’s that aspect of Valentine’s Day that is pretty awesome, too. He bought me two reclining lawn chairs for Valentine’s Day this year – or, technically – I bought them as our gift to each other. We can’t wait to sit in them side by side on the patio this summer to just relax together and watch the kids play.