A Fosburg Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day to everyone!  I hope you had as great a day as we did.

Chris did a great job.  On Monday for FHE (family home evening) we watched a little video on mormon.org about loving and showing love.  He asked a couple questions that got some great answers.

Chris: so what is something that you saw in the video?
Joe: the dad and the brother were playing together.
Eve: the people were being nice.
Liz: playing!

Then Chris talked about Valentine's day and the kids said that the day is all about showing love.  It was a great conversation and I was so pleased to hear how well my kids understood the purpose of Valentine's day and being kind to each other.

By the time Valentine's had come the kids had been practicing showing love all week.  They had done some great things for each other and for mom and dad.

We had some fun activities planned for the day for school.  We began by coloring some great Valentine's day pictures.  After each child presented their picture they got a little heart treat.  Next we played a game of CandyLand.  The kids had a great time and were super silly.  Each kid practiced several skills like counting, colors, taking turns, sharing, and being good sports - both as the winner and loser of the game.  Of course, all of those skills required more heart treats.  Then we played a rousing game of "Mommy says..." which then needed some awesome treats...more candy hearts!

So as the kids were munching the hearts we had a moment of real school lesson and we discussed the invention of Valentine's day.  We talked about how it used to be a religious day to remember certain people (like St. Valentine) who were kind and good and obedient to God's commandment to "love one another."  Then I introduced them to Geoffrey Chaucer and how he wrote a story that changed Valentine's day into a day to "show love" to those around us.  We talked about how Chaucer helped add the idea of hearts, candy, roses and cupid to Valentine's day.  Then we reviewed what activities we had done so far.  We colored pictures with hearts in them.  We had eaten a lot of candy as rewards.

The next activity included an art project.  We made heart mobiles with lots of decorations and nice sayings on them.  Just before we finished daddy surprised us with an amazing bouquet of red roses, red carnations, and tiger lilies.  It was so beautiful and reinforced our earlier point about the flowers as part of the special day.

After lunch and daddy went back to work, the kids ran outside to trade Valentine's treats with their friends.  It was so cute.  To finish off our day of "showing love" we helped out a military/LDS family who's moving have a romantic evening by watching their three adorable kids.  Our kids had a great holiday and we enjoyed serving someone together as a family.

When everyone went home and the kids went to bed, Chris was ready to hang out and I was ready to sleep for an eternity.  Thankfully, my wonderful husband was kind enough to let me move our fun to the next night which is date night anyway.  We are going to watch the new "Total Recall" (his pick) and just hang out.  Can't wait.

Hope you all had as great a day as we did!  Loves to you all!  And don't forget, it doesn't need to be Valentine's day for you to "show love"!