Valentines Day

Valentine's morning my kiddo's came down for breakfast to this. Each had their very own box of candy, a baggie of homeade carmels and pretzel/rolo treat and a heart shaped swirly straw. I do NOT like straws and I almost NEVER buy them. These "special" straws can be used all day long but at the end of the day I tell them they are now done and gone. The kids throw them away for me. When no one is watching I pull them out of the garbage, wash them and put them back in my valentine box. These straws have now been given 3 years in a row. I laugh that they haven't caught on yet!My breakfast pictures turned out too blurry to post. I served pink heart shaped pancakes with pink strawberry syrup and a heart on top made out of cool whip thanks to the spray cool whip cans. They were in heaven!

Monday night for FHE the kids and I put there valentines together. When it came time to make something for the teachers I realized I really slacked off this year. I had NOTHING to give them, I hadn't even thought about them. What is my problem? In the end I pulled out my heart shaped cake pan and made chocolate chip cookie bars.
The kids then made a special valentines and attached it to the big cookies.

A little story about Madelyn's valentine outfit.... She came to me about 2 weeks ago and asked if I remembered that Valentines was just around the corner. She then asked if I was going to make her a valentine shirt like I have done for many years now. Not wanting to disappoint her yet not having a fabric store down the street or a Wal Mart for a new plain tee I wasn't sure if I could come up with one. So I asked her to help me design what she wanted with what we already had. Madelyn surprised me with her creativity. She spent an hour or two creating different valentine shirt designs on paper. She then picked a plain brown tee she already had and some corresponding fabric we pulled out of my scrap fabric drawer. Lucky for her the fabric she picked out matched her bright pink pants she was hoping to wear on Valentine's. I wish I would have saved her paper with the different drawings of valentine shirt ideas. They were all so cute! 

Ta da....
Here she is.
I love this girl's enthusiasm when it comes to the holidays. Her and I are quite alike when it comes to this. We both love all holidays and want to go all out for them. Make them memorable!
She couldn't stop with just the outfit. She asked for hearts in her hair too. And so we created two pigtails and turned them into heart shapes and added some ribbons to the bottoms. She LOVED the way she looked when she went to school.

I really struggle on Tuesdays. They are by far my busiest days of the week. It seems all morning I'm getting ready for preschool and then when that's finally over at 1 p.m. I get lunch, clean up from preschool and prepare for mutual later that night. The kids get home from school just for Hunter to run off to scouts. When he get's home we eat dinner and off we all go for mutual and then don't get home till about 9pm. By the time I crawl into bed Tuesday nights I am beyond exhausted. I know being pregnant has a lot to do with this. So, when it came to our valentine dinner instead of going all out which I would have liked to do I did an easy meal instead. We had spaghetti and a homemade heart breadstick with pink lemonade. For dessert we ate our extra heart shaped cookie bar. It was yummy and it worked for us this year.

It was a busy but great Valentine's Day.

My daughters are so different. Madelyn loves the frills, the dressing up, she WANTS her hair done each day with a matching bow attached. She loves the holidays and enjoys "dressing up" for them.

Emily on the other hand could really care less. While making Madelyn's shirt she asked me if I was going to make her one too. I told her NO!..... Why????

I made her a Halloween shirt that she refused to wear. Didn't matter that she picked the shirt and the corresponding fabric. At Christmas she did the same thing. I told her then that I would not be making her anything else since she refuses to wear them. I spend a lot of time and energy creating these holiday shirts and I don't appreciate her attitude towards them. Especially when she asks me to make her one specifically and then refuses to wear it. It's not that she doesn't like the way the shirt has turned out she just doesn't want to wear them anymore. And so, I am done!

After the big kids left for school Valentine morning Emily asked if she had a new shirt too?

When I said no, I'll admit I was almost hoping for a little temper tantrum, anything to show that she was jealous or disappointed that she didn't have a valentine shirt to wear like big sister.

But all she said was, "Good, I don't want one".

Well, I'm glad little one because I didn't waste my time making you one.

I feel like we are raising our girls the same way, yet they are so different and, in more ways, than just dressing up for the holidays.

It will be interesting to see the personality of this new baby girl that's going to join our family.