Valentine's



 Growing up I hated Valentine's Day. It probably had something to do with the rotten luck of never once being in a relationship on Valentine's Day (technically, that's not entirely true. I actually had a fiance break up with me--via email!-- at like 2am on V day.). Ever since I've been married though, my feelings on the day are quite the opposite. I LOVE Valentine's! My mom made us "Love Pockets" (a family tradition on my side) several years back, but they didn't do well in our last move. The "Love Pocket" tradition works like this: Each family member has a pocket with their name on it and once a day or so everyone else in the family puts something in the pocket (piece of candy, a love note, a picture, sticker, etc)  from Feb 1st to Feb 14th. This year, since our hanging pocket strip broke, I was looking for something a little different. I came across the idea of using Target dollar spot mailboxes and thrift store candle sticks. I love how they all turned out and the kids thought it was the coolest thing to pull the little mail tab up. Each mailbox was less than 2 bucks each and the tradition continues! 

another Pinterest project. I'm really short on Valentine's decor and this was a really great, inexpensive help to my living room wall. The 3 letters were 50 cents at Michael's and I had the rest on hand!

  A down side to having school aged kids is that Valentine's Day is SUPER busy and stressful in the morning.
The kids and I made their Valentine's again this year, but I'm seriously thinking that this may be the last year. With 4 kids in school, they took FOREVER to make the night before. Not to mention there's still the other school afternoon junk to deal with.

breakfast of champions, am I right?

 Another Valentine's tradition in our family is that Brian buys the girls a Valentine gift and I buy the boys one. This year, the boys each got a noise sticks and car. Brian was a brave man and ventured into Claire's for the girls gifts. He bought them each a hair clip and ring.

  The little girls had a party at school and as usual, Mrs. Rogers went all out. They loved. it.
Caleb had a party the the teacher funded, which I thought was pretty nice and Keira's class through a pretty cool party to...if I do say so myself. :)
  Later that night, Brian and I went out on a date (woot! woot!) while my parents very generously watched all our little guys. All and all, an AWESOME Valentines!