Valentine Review

I kind of went overboard on the printables for Valentines Day.  Pinterest is an amazing invention :)

 Since Ben takes popcorn to school for his snack every day I thought this one would be perfect for his teachers.

 These are just right for sewing friends :)

 I also printed off a bunch that I wanted to frame or use as decorations in some way.

 I loved filling these "Ten things I love about..." cards for Andy and the kids.

 I filled some mason jars with festive sewing stuff and attached the tags with some baker's twine and the cute tags.

These were super fun!

 You might know I'm a bee fan... so how could I not love this cute printable?  These I gave to my Visiting Teaching ladies.

 Baker's twine again.  I kind of really like it :)

 It's been somewhat of a fun challenge to come up with gift ideas for Josh's male teacher.

This was the perfect printable for teachers.  I paired it with some "21st century chalk".

 For the female teachers I stuffed some tissue paper down into the bottom of some large...wait for it...Mason Jars!  I kind of really like them too.  Then I topped them off with lots of chocolate.  I also added a vinyl chalkboard label to the front of the jars with their names for a personal touch.

 

 I gave the kids a choice of doing home made valentines or regular old store valentines.  The boys both chose the Phineas and Ferb and Angry Bird valentines that I had purchased just in case and Abby said she wanted to do home made.  I gave her several choices from Pinterest and she thought these were pretty cute.  (That's a tootsie pop in the black tissue paper).

 Valentine Boxes:

I asked the kids if they needed to make boxes for their valentines.  In the past some teachers have made receptacles (the best word I could think of) in their classrooms.  I remember the making of the valentine box as pretty much the best part of Valentines Day and so I wanted to make sure my kids enjoyed the same experience.  Josh said he didn't know if he was supposed to bring something and Abby said that her teacher told them they could just bring a plastic bag if they wanted to.  WHAT?!?  A plastic bag?  This would never do...back to Pinterest.
(I later learned that this elaborate V. box ordeal is probably a Utah tradition.  Who would have known?)

These are some variations of some ideas we found online.

We kind of went the fowl route.

Abby helped quite a bit with hers and was quite particular about the eyes.

Josh didn't touch his until it was all done.  That's okay...it was pretty fun and easy :)

Tissue paper ended up being a good medium to cover the boxes...I'll have to remember this.
 

 A whole slew of valentines!

 Valentines Day Andy surprised me with breakfast in bed...on Ben's bedroom floor.

 I went and helped with the room mother party in Matt's class later that day.

I was in charge of a game - "Draw a Love Bug" (another Pintereset printable). 

When the kids got home from school I asked them about their boxes.  Abby said there was only one other girl in her class that made a box.  

I made some Valentine pancakes for dinner.  We have found a new favorite pancake recipe.  They're so hearty and good.  I'll have to post the recipe some time.

 After dinner we tried out our new Velata chocolate warmer that I won from a give away on a blog.  It was pretty tasty...but admittedly, that was the last thing we needed after a day full of chocolates and sweets.

 Andy went non traditional and brought home a gorgeous bouquet of gerbers instead of the usual orchid plant.  This was okay since I still have two that have continued to live from years past.

Now that heart holiday is past, onward to the next big project...

I'm helping plan and decorate for my cousin's baby shower. 

I'm excited to see if the ideas in my head turn out the way I envision them.

February Fluff

I can't believe I haven't posted in February yet!

I have a small excuse, but not a very good one.  For a little while there were several keys on my laptop that were not working.  We were planning on getting a new computer anyway so that just sped up our search.  However, before we could make a decision on which one to buy, Andy some how got things working on this old one.  I guess we'll hold on to it a little bit longer :)

p.s. 2 of the keys that were not working were the colon and right parenthesis (spell check gave me that word).  Therefore, I was not able to do my smiley face which if you read my blog even a little, you know I can't do a post without several smileys :)

So, now I'm going to throw the first 3/4 of the month at you, probably all in one post.

I love cross country skiing!  My first experience ever with the sport was on a first time date in college.
I could hardly stay up on the things.  I was so embarrassed and uncoordinated.
Fast forward  7 or 8 years...my friends invite me to go with them.  I don't know why I agreed, maybe I just felt safe among friends.  I had such a blast!  I did fall a lot but I didn't seem to care this time.
I ended up buying some used skis later on and have been enjoying them ever since (4 or 5 years).

I got out for the first real time this year a couple of weeks ago with a good friend.

The snow was super sparkly!  I wish you could see it better in this picture.

Matt learned about germs in school...

Pizza night in February = heart shaped pizza

Did you try the new raspberry hugs?  Oh how I wish they weren't seasonal!
YUM!

This is our home teacher.  He's great!  Every time he comes the kids gather around him on the floor and he tells them a story...a story with a lesson.  (Ben was up in his high chair finishing his lunch or he would have been right down there with them).

Good news!  Our new monitor works!  We received a replacement in the mail a couple of weeks ago and we have not had any false alarms and it has alerted us to a seizure.
Ben had a day last week that he had 5 tonic clonics.
The next day he fell asleep on the couch while he was playing with his toys.  The poor guy was just plain tuckered out!

Spiritual Thought...
Andy and I had the opportunity to go to a meeting for the Seminary and Institute employees recently.  Elder Oaks spoke via broadcast.  He said something that I really struck a chord with me.  He was talking about how people use their agency to make poor choices which affect others...Newtown, CT. came to mind.  Some may ask why God lets terrible things like that occur. Why doesn't He stop those things from happening?  Because that would be opposing the law of agency.  He will not take away our gift to choose.  However, while God does not prevent those choices (or the consequences of those choices), He will bless us to endure the consequences of others' choices.
I've been thinking about that a lot lately...I don't know why.  Probably because of Sandy Hook.


Well, I think I'm done for the night.  I'll write a separate post soon dedicated to all the Valentine excitement:)