Joyfully Weary

I already shared earlier in the month about our  V-day traditions.  This has become one of my favorite holidays...I'm a bit like a kid, though, and get excited for every celebration. It did this mama's heart so much good to sit down and write what I love about my kiddos; they are such unique-fun-extraordinary people.  Life can get too hectic sometimes and I loose sight of what a joy they are. We have these little tin mailboxes, that I picked up at Target's dollar spot; Jeremy's been leaving little notes in them before he leaves for work. I think I'm going to start doing the same. There is just something about the written word...it seems to have more power to change outlooks/attitudes than spoken words do. The kiddos where all pumped to look for their hearts again. Mini Man always asks us to hide his really well and I think we succeeded this year. He was the last to find all of his hearts. We actually gave up on the last one. He found it a couple hours later...

It been hard for me to find time this past month to visit/update this blog. We've continued to struggle with various cold and flu bugs. Plus we've had quite a bit of work done on our home. We were blessed and thankful to receive a grant that paid for new windows and doors, some plumbing, electrical, HVAC updates, and a few other repairs. I'm obviously not complaining but adding workers, even the most pleasant and conscientious ones, brought a whole new level of  frenziedness  to our already chaotic home.  Despite the upheaval we were able to stick to our Valentine's Day traditions...well most of them. We usually have some sort of sweet pastry for breakfast but I was just too tired to do any baking. I ended up sending Jeremy to the store for some fun cereal - the kids didn't complain. 😉 Our other traditions are red and pink balloons covering the living room floor and a heart search. We write ten things we enjoy/love about each kid on the hearts and then hide th...

I enjoy celebrations: the colorful decorations, the fun food, and the activities.  I also enjoy traditions. Knowing what to expect builds anticipation and it helps to solidify memories. I think celebrations and traditions can knit a family closer together. Our Valentine's day tradition is to always hide hearts around the house for our kids to find.  

It's been a while since I've posted a small graces but life around here has been good. Jeremy recently started working part-time at an architectural firm in addition to teaching full time at Judson so things have been a bit busy and hectic. You never seem to realize how good/spoiled you are until something changes and with Jeremy's work schedule increasing it means I've had pick up some slack around the house. Jeremy never turns his nose up at household chores and is great with the kids; I just feel like with him working two jobs I should take over where I can at home. It means I'm running a little harder during the day so I don't always have much energy left once the kids are in bed. I'm sure once we adjust to the new routine things will get better.  Little Lady had her fourth birthday a couple weeks back and it ended up being quite the celebration. It was actually a Christmas present but a couple days before her birthday she got to attend Frozen on Ic...

This Valentine's the kids woke up to the living room full of balloons. We also continued our tradition of hiding hearts as little love notes around the house for the kids to find. They were each assigned a color and had a blast running around hunting them down. Maca also came over in the morning with donuts and a few other treats and treasures. The rest of the day was pretty low key but that afternoon we did decorate some cupcakes. This marshmallow fondant recipe is amazing - it's tasty and as pliable as play-dough so even very young kids can work with it.  Here's a cute video of the kids "surprising" Maca with a few of the cupcakes. 

Yesterday was a fun day!  The night before Husbandie and I cut out hearts, wrote down some of our favorite things about our kids, and then hid them around the house.  The boys noticed right away and were super excited to find them all.  After finding them, we lined them all up on a blank wall and the kids asked me to read them several times through out the day...I'll probably be reading them a lot over the next week or so. :)  We did not do too much school work but Big Buddy did practice writing his name on lots of Valentines - it was hard work because the space was much smaller than he's used to. Once all our Valentines were addressed we taped them to some heart shaped lollipops we had made over the weekend and then tried to be very sneaky as we delivered them to our neighbors and friends.  We did however get caught - they might have had a tip :) - at Maca and Papa's house, where they invited us in for heart-shaped donut...