Valentine’s Day

This year was pretty low-key compared to last year. We started on Friday with parties for both kids at school. They wore their red and white (and Haley actually had a heart shirt I bought ages ago on clearance). They came home with completely different accounts. JT: “We passed them out and I got a bunch of candy. I’ll probably throw half of it away.” Haley: “Well, first we put the treats in the bags for each child. The bags were set out in the hallway in ABC order and we had to take one treats out of our bag and put them in the bag with the child’s name on it. So I did Quinn’s first, and it was all the way on the end because her name starts with Q, so it was by Z for Zander and Zoe. And then…” (another 20 minutes of straight description). JT really did throw half of his away. 🙂

On Saturday, JT had basketball and Haley got to go to a birthday party for a friend at school. She was so excited, because 1) it’s a birthday party, and 2) it’s her first one in Port Orchard. It feels like you’re really settled when you get invited to a party, I think. She wanted to wear the same dress she wore for her own fifth birthday, but we added some layers for a winter version.

Then on Sunday, the kids got new Bibles. JT got the NIV Adventure Bible, and Haley got the NIrV Adventure Bible for Girls. They were so excited to have Bibles with “all the books” (since Haley only had a New Testament before) and with their names on them. We got them Bible highlighters too, and they spent some time looking up and highlighting their Awana memory verses while I made breakfast.

They took their new Bibles proudly to church, and enjoyed following along in them during the sermon. Then we went to the Bug & Reptile Museum in Bremerton in the afternoon. We had made other plans but found out the YMCA pool was closed for cleaning, and then it was pouring down rain, so we settled for this idea and it ended up being really fun. There is a scavenger hunt page on the museum website, so we printed that out and took pens with us to complete the page while we were there.

I made a yummy dinner and served it on white china with red napkins and a silver candlestick, just for fun. Then Jim shooed all of us upstairs. The kids got ready for bed while I read a book – so nice – and then we tucked them in. Jim got me all the Harry Potter movies for Christmas, and we’ve been trying to watch them ever since. (We actually planned a weekend marathon but realized it would be something like 20 hours of movies, which I couldn’t imagine doing, and it got cancelled due to other plans anyway.) We finally watched #1 a couple of weeks ago, and we committed to watching #2 on Valentine’s Day. Jim said he would provide the movie snacks. Little did I know he was planning something really fun…

He made chocolate frogs and licorice wands and butter beer! (If you haven’t read or seen Harry Potter, this doesn’t make any sense.) It was really fun and a great surprise, and the chocolate frogs were soooo good that I ate four. A fun end to the weekend, to be sure.