Valentine's Day

Ainsley has Chinese New Year, Hannah has Valentine's Day. A day to celebrate love - she was born for that. So her Daddy has stepped up to the challenge. Every year he gets all of us flowers and last year he made us heart waffles for breakfast.

This year, though, he went all out. Decorated the house with the girls and then quarantined us in my bedroom for two hours. Two. Hours.

He had Grayson come get us one by one and give us the flowers.


Matt lit the candles. (Ainsley was the only one of us who dressed for the occasion.)

Zander laughed at all of us.


Then we got to sit down for dinner.

All of us girls love seafood so he made us a dinner with favorites for each of us - pan fried lemon shrimp, halibut, garlic mashed potatoes, and bacon asparagus. And sparkling cider, of course.

So very good.

The girls said thank you and he said "I like to spoil my girls once a year and make dinner." Which is funny because he loves making dinner, so he does it every night that he's home. Which worked out better for me when he wasn't working nights. I'm just saying, making dinner wasn't unusual for him - making such a fancy dinner, though, was. I'm not a big one for romantic Valentine's Day celebrations. He's winning me over, though.


(Hannah's picture of us. It was a close-up.)

And Zander just laughed at all of us.

Our house looks a little bit different.

Ainsley loves China. A lot. I've been told that she was born on the wrong continent. By her. So it's not much of a surprise that the Chinese New Year was going to be a pretty big thing here. We hung up some Asian stuff that we got at the party store. Not authentic, but fun. Lots of red!


And construction paper Chinese lanterns.


She has her own 'China desk' where she keeps her favorite Christmas present - a Chinese calligraphy set - and she's got Chinese dragons taped up all around it. I wasn't allowed to take pictures of those because they might lose their luck - don't ask - so you get a side view.

Those are her calligraphy pens hanging from the board.

On Sunday night we added to the ambience with good luck posters that we painted and bowls of oranges the kids cut out of construction paper.

Sunday night we had dumplings and today we had noodles, for longevity.

The kids got red envelopes with money in them and a little present. Gray thought his Buddha was worthless, so I traded him for a Twix bar. We were both happy with that. Hannah got a monkey figurine (she was born in the year of the monkey and is proud of that). Ainsley got a 'Chinese waving good luck kitty bank'. I'll have to get a picture of it for you because she's going to make me. She is in heaven.

When I get my sewing machine back from the shop, they'll each get a new article of clothing that is red or orange.

What else? Oh, yeah - Hannah decided a party wasn't a party without a pinata. So she made one out of construction paper and packing tape. It took twenty minutes to break that thing.

And Ainsley wants me to show you her origami 'China girls'.

Technically they're 'Japan girls' because they're wearing kimonos, but we're not much for being technical around here. Our house has a distinctly Asian vibe right now. It's not a traditional holiday for us, but it is important to Ains, so we did what we could. It's been fun. I kinda hope she's still into China next year.

Easter - five days later.

I wanted to share what we did for Easter because it was so much fun and this is kind of my journal.

One of our friends hosted an Easter party on Friday night, so we went to that. Hundreds of eggs for 25 kids and an adult hunt. So. Much. Fun.

The littlest kids got their own hunt in.



Gray was sure there were some more out there for him.

Then the big kids got a much more challenging hunt.


After dark, the adults had a hunt with flashlights. And kids. The kids were not about to stay in for that much fun.

This was my favorite part of the night - watching Gray tool around with three other boys about his age, making circles on bikes and trikes for an hour.


Matt has a tradition of setting up a treasure hunt every Easter. It gets better each year.

The kids get a map and have to follow it exactly - even if it means circling a tree until they're dizzy.

The girls have gotten pretty good at map reading.
And circling trees.
Gray goes straight for the candy hidden at each spot.

"Swing in the hammock" wasn't on the map, but it had to be done.

And then, for his big finale, the treasure - Pillow Pets.

In case you've ever wondered, this is what heroes are made of.

This holiday was made for her.

Please. A holiday to celebrate love? That should have been Hannah's birthday. It's almost bigger than Christmas for her.

We've been working up to it for a week, making mailboxes,

making lots of little crafts.

Not nearly as many crafts as I had planned though. You see, Valentine's Day is so important that it can't be just one day. It has to be a week. So she took my craft ideas and recipe ideas and spread them out over the next week. A week filled with love - I'm not complaining.

I made foam lips and moustaches and stuck them on lollipops for the kids.

That was fun to find in the mailboxes first thing in the morning.

All day they were checking the flags on the boxes to see if they had any more mail. All day they were putting valentines in each other's boxes.

We made stamps for her to seal her Valentine's letters with. (You have to send the cards *on* Valentine's Day, she says, as they have more love in them that way.)





Then, though she didn't want to do the next day's project that day, she went through the ribbon she wanted to use for it and exclaimed over it and sorted it in ten different ways and then built a tower with it. Then she took pictures and asked me to share them on the blog.

Picture by Hannah

Picture by Hannah

Picture by Hannah

Flowers from Daddy.



The rest of the day was spent on a mix of Valentine's day and normal day stuff.

Tractor pulls.
The ever-present art store on the stairs.

Microscope time.

Diego - on dvd and on the computer. My son loves Diego right now.

Hannah teaching violin class.

Reading.

Picking out fabric for library bags.

Cuddling by the heater.

Farm chores.

Going to Coldstone Creamery for their Valentine's special - free ice-cream for the kids, $1.50 ice cream for the adults. Yum.

Picking up a heart-shaped pizza for $6 - who doesn't love V-day specials?

Letting the kids dream at the pet store.

Then home to eat and go to bed.

Or not.

More Valentines made for everybody. Daddy gave them his.

An experiment about how useful opposable thumbs are.

Very useful.


More reading.

Bed, finally.

Yes!

It was a love-filled day.

Our Christmas Morning.

Started out with anticipation.

It was so worth it.

The girls were counting on getting something very specific.

And there it is. Hannah, especially, has not been parted from it very much over the last week.

Hannah knew exactly what she wanted to make for her family for Christmas, so I helped her out.

They were much loved.

Did I say much loved?




Matt played dolls with them for hours.

The day ended with satisfaction - and a show. Of course.





*Many of these pictures were taken by my father.