All for Love

So I write that title, and now I have a cheesy song from high school going through my head - and it's not the Bryan Adams one either.    In fact, I have no idea who sang the song, I just remember the boppity rhythm of the part that says "I do it all for love".  Surely it's the onset of early dementia...more on that later.


So Valentines day has come and gone, and I am happily picking up the pieces.  I love to celebrate.  I love it that, so far, my kids are happy to indulge any extra-special things that I might throw at them.  Granted, a lot of what I throw at them is food related.  I'm no dummy.


Part of our Valentines Day celebrations included making these really fun lollipop cover valentines.  It is wonderful seeing them choosing the colours and images that are "just right" for them.  They each have their own motive for choosing what they do:  one chooses to reflect the holiday, another, who the gift is from and another who they are giving to.  Then the youngest crafter chooses to reflect what his big brothers and sister made.  If mess made equates the love felt - boy did we feel the love!

The thing I am trying to learn in all of this, is it to do it more in advance.  There have been years where we've ended up doing nothing because my lack of planning ended in the time being gone. Like a good mother I vow to do better next year.  If I'm still blogging, I guess we'll all find out if do better :)  And because I have to justify the plethora of stamping and paper crafting supplies I own, I never buy them.  Truly I WANT to make them, and so do the kids - I just have to plan better.  This year was the best yet, but we still ended up doing a big push to get these things done in time.  

Date Night Trauma

Three or four times a year, our church hosts a "Parent's Night Out".  To coincide with the ensuing holiday, they hosted one on Feb. 12th.  We took advantage of the night of free babysitting and decided to break with tradition and rent a chick-flick.  It has been a good 10 years or more since I watched a chick-flick. The last one I remember watching was When a Man Love a Woman years and years ago, and I was thoroughly traumatized.  I loved the movie- just not the ensuing blubbering and snot. 

We rented and watched The Notebook.  Wonderful movie.  It honestly was.   I was in full ugly-cry mode by the end of it.  Funny thing, being a woman. Tears...Crying... Cause you feel happy and loved.  I have often wished I was a pretty cry-er.  But I'm not.  I just skip straight to the ugly-cry no matter the occasion.  Hence my avoidance of chick flicks - I can cry well enough on my own for all sorts of good reasons.  I am sure when we went in to pick up the kids from the church everyone there assumed we had just lived through a whirlwind fight, or I that my dog had just been run over by a bus (this would require me having a dog, and living on a bus route - but I digress...)  I have no idea how women subject themselves to such things on a regular basis.   Having said that, it made for a memorable Valentine's Date!

Did I mention how much I love my husband?  Cause I do.  A lot.

For the Love of Food

By the time V-day actually arrived we had already eaten all of the sugar cookies.  (You may call to mind that we baked a whole whack of them just three days earlier.)  They make a well balanced snack, lunch, snack, and dinner, and they can be eaten very, very quickly.  All in the same day.  Note to self:  make more sugar cookies...and start Pilates again.

I did take time to make lunch a little special to mark the occasion.  Pizza was on the lunch menu, and really it wasn't much more work to make them more lovey.  I know they talk about all the different love languages, but I think food deserves it's own category.  So we ate heart shaped pizzas. We felt the love.

Reason to Celebrate

I love occasions to remember.  I like to make things that help me to remember - that's me.  You don't have to be crafty or bake-y (it's a new word I'm trying out) or whatever to remember, but I think it's good to take a moment and do whatever feels like You  to mark the occasion.  I want to remember to be thankful for the people I have been given to love.  Thinking of and doing for and giving to someone else is a great cure for what ails you!

Even after all this time,
The sun never says to the earth,
"You owe me."
Look what happens with
A love like that.
It lights the whole sky.

Hafiz of Persia