Valentine's Day!!

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!!  Hope you all had a wonderful day. I know we have had a wonderful couple of days.  Our celebration started yesterday with going out to eat and shopping, two things that we rarely do with this big 'ole family of ours.  Having two under the age of two makes it difficult to do much of either.  At least, without pulling our hair out.   ;@)

But God blessed us with a very peaceful day and we were so thankful, my husband and I.  We decided to let the kiddos pick out their own Valentine's gifts this year.  It's funny to watch the differences between our oldest, who is a boy, and the girls.  He always heads for the toy department and the girls always head for, you guessed it, the clothing and accessories!  But who doesn't get a kick out of shopping for their own gift, right?  So it was a blast!  There were almost no tears all day long and lots of laughter and silliness.  We all went home with a little something and we chose 2 humongous (is that a word?) boxes of chocolate between the 6 of us!!  Of course, the baby doesn't get chocolate and the two year old only gets it rarely.  So really, I guess it was between the 4 of us!! 

Which reminds me of why Valentine's Day is almost my favorite holiday.  I LOVE chocolate!!  I mean LOVE.  Like sometimes I think I might not be able to live without it kind of love.  That's wrong I know, but I really do enjoy chocolate more than any other kind of food.  Chocolate should be a food group.  Well, chocolate is a food group in my book. 

Sorry, got a little sidetracked.  Where was I?  Oh, Valentine's Day...I really like Valentine's Day.  It is an amazing holiday.  It's all about love, and what is better than love? Besides chocolate?  (Just kidding....)  I like Christmas because it is about Jesus and His birth and Who He is.  I like Easter because it is about what Jesus did.   But I like Valentine's Day because it is about why He did it.  Now I know that traditionally, Valentine's Day is all about romantic love.  And that is wonderful and we celebrate that.  But as a family, we also celebrate the love between each other as a family and the love that God has for us.  We are so thankful to have each other to love and we are thankful for the love that God showed when He sent His Son to earth to redeem us.  It is amazing to me that He could look at us and see who we are and still want to save us.  It is crazy and wonderful and amazing all at the same time!! 

So anyway, we spent yesterday shopping and we spent this evening exchanging homemade Valentine's and just enjoying each other.  Granny and Papa had sent a little something for all of us, so we all had fun going through those presents.  We decided to have dinner at home and we just had a wonderful day overall!  So nice to just escape from reality for a bit and enjoy the holiday. 

Oh, I forgot!  I did do some business stuff, so I wanted to show you a couple of my new designs.  I will just tease you with some pictures today and explain how they came about another day since I've already taken up soooo much of your time talking about this wonderful holiday we had ;@)

Wow!  What a week it has been!  It's almost Christmas and we are trying to get it all done in time.  My kiddos are asking every day "How many more days til Christmas!??!!"  The excitement is in the air everywhere we go. 

Every family has traditions during the holidays.  One of our family traditions is baking sugar cookies together and decorating them.  We also enjoy driving around looking at all of the Christmas lights.  My childrens' faces light up with joy when we see a big neighborhood with all the lights shining brightly.  It's one of the joys of the holidays.  Another Christmas tradition is making crafts.  My children love to make any kind of craft - especially the messy ones.  They love to paint and cut and glue any type of material!  (My little Anastacia is the "mess maker" in the family - her favorite thing to do is draw on anything but paper.  She walks around the house saying "only on paper" as she scribbles on the wall or the door.  Yikes!  And it doesn't seem to matter where I hide the crayons or markers, she finds them!)  A really fun thing to do is to make homemade ornaments for the Christmas tree.  We like to use the cardboard ornaments that you find in the craft section at Wal Mart or Hobby Lobby.  They are really cheap and all you have to do is let your child go crazy with the paint or markers.  Let it dry, apply modge podge and then allow it to dry.  If you want it to really shine, add several layers of modge podge.  I'm telling you, it's better than any store bought ornament and you'll always have the memory of your little one making it for you with their very own hands.

I think it's so important that we have traditions in our family, it gives our children a sense of stability and unity.   I would love to hear some of your holiday traditions.  Please leave me a note tellng me what your traditions are.  Hey, maybe we could get some ideas from each other!!