Valentine's Day

I've never been a huge fan of Valentine's Day. I prefer spontaneous romance more. But now that we have kids that are getting old enough to enjoy holidays like this we try to make it a special day. I like to get them little boxes of chocolates each year. Dave was really cute and made heart pancakes with the kids in the morning. Pretty impressive for a Monday morning before work!!

What I came downstairs to....

Benjamin had a Valentine's party at school. They were to bring Valentines in for their friends (he chose one of his favorites for the moment, Laffy Taffy to share). They also were to decorate a box to collect all of their Valentines. We chose an empty tissue box (Benjamin gets really excited by recycling things we don't need anymore). He did an excellent job decorating it and had a lot of fun. Anna was sweet and made Daddy a Valentine's Day card while we were working on Benjamin's box so she could be part of the fun too.

Here are the Valentine hearts we made earlier in the week. Benjamin really made my heart swell when he was decorating his. We had been to the store just the two of us earlier that day and he kept drawing lots of pictures of me and him going to the store and other places together. On the way to the store I explained that we need to go to Sam's first for a few things before we go to Wal-mart and asked if that was okay. He told me, "That's okay with me Momma. The only things that matter to me is that I love you and that I get to come with you. So it doesn't matter to me how many stores we have to go to." Then in the store I told him, "Thanks for coming with me. I'm so glad that I get to have you to keep me company." and he says, "You're welcome, Momma. Thank you for inviting me." I had to get a picture of the kids in their Valentine themed shirts under their hearts.

Collin really surprised Dave and I.....he walked right up next to Anna when we told him to and without any encouraging started declaring "cheese!!" and then squealing with delight at himself.

It was so adorable!!! He was REALLY cheesing it up!

Then we had some pre-bedtime coloring fun.........

and Collin continued to be a cheese monkey!

Collin said his first sentence last week. We were in the living room one morning just the two of us and he came toddling over to me and inquisitively asked, "Dada bye-bye?" Dave was upstairs in the shower, so I was happy to be able to tell him that Daddy would be right back. He also tries to say a few two word phrases too like love you - Vahhh Voo, belly button - behy buh, right back - iiiih bah, thank you - tay ooh. He's really quite the talker! And here's an Anna story that may be TMI: After having Anna go potty before bed, she came out and told us, "I ranned out of poopies." She had gone earlier that day and so she was letting us know she didn't need to go anymore. As if to reassure us she then told us, "But I'm going to make more poopy in my body."