Valentine’s Day 2011

We had a fun Valentine’s Day!

Cambria and I did a few fun things to celebrate. We made some cupcakes a few days ago, per Bri’s request. She woke up, and first thing in the morning said she wanted to make cupcakes. So that’s what we did! She helped make them, then I let her frost her very own cupcake and eat it for breakfast. She thought that was super cool, and I told her not to get used to the idea.

Then for lunch today we made heart-shaped pizzas. I stole this idea from a blog I found called No Time for Flash Cards. I cut tortillas into heart shapes (note: next time I will cut out a template instead of doing it freehand!), and then I also cut our pepperoni into heart shapes as well (another note: next time I will buy a tiny heart-shaped cookie cutter!). We had a picnic in the living room and watched a movie together while we ate our lunch.

Kyrie and Asher both had parties at school, which meant CANDY! They came home and proceeded to devour more candy than they should have. But hey, it’s once a year, so I wasn’t going to moderate too much. Derk came home early, and he walked in the house with flowers for all of us girls and a new poster for Asher.

After dinner, we had our Family Home Evening. We read the story of the Good Samaritan and talked about how we’re supposed to love everyone. Then we had a little activity. I cut out a bunch of paper hearts, and I wrote our names on 5 of them. We each drew a heart, then we secretly wrote some act of service we were going to do for the person we drew. It was actually really amazing how this turned out because the ones who really needed to work on serving/loving a certain person in our family ended up drawing that person’s name! It was a really cool non-coincidence! I told everyone that we’re not going to just do that one act of service, though, and that I wanted all of us to find ways everyday throughout the rest of this week that we can serve that person. I’m really excited to see how this pans out!

After our FHE lesson, Nana called and wanted to Skype. This was one of the sweetest moments I’ve witnessed in a long time. It was so cute because we couldn’t get my mom’s headset to work, so the kids talked to her on the phone while they sat in front of the computer so they could see each other. They were so excited to see her, and it just made my heart ache that we’re so far away. Seeing them singing to each other, talking, and laughing was just precious and heart-breaking at the same time. It was so, so sweet that I snapped pictures of each of them taking their turn talking to Nana!

During Kyrie’s turn to talk to Nana, she lost tooth #19!

The Tooth Fairy stops making her rounds at about 9pm, so Kyrie had to hurry off to bed! As she was brushing her teeth, she turned to me and said she really hoped I wasn’t the Tooth Fairy. Then she said, “But Mom, even if I know the Tooth Fairy isn’t real, will she still leave me money?” I told her the Tooth Fairy only comes to children who believe. She still believes. But she just couldn’t go to sleep before writing the Tooth Fairy a note! She was in such a hurry that she couldn’t take the time to find a piece of paper and just wrote on the back of her scrapbooking stickers instead.

The Tooth Fairy couldn’t leave $5 or $10 this time, so she tried to compensate by leaving $2. It was Kyrie’s first molar, after all!