Valentine's Day

With our recent cases of RSV in our house, it was no surprise that Abby caught it as well. Since I stay home with the kids (and I know other families at Abby's preschool have little ones at home) we decided to have our pediatrician excuse Abby from school for a week to get through some of the highly contagious days of RSV and not pass it along to her classmates.

This resulted in a really. lame. valentine's day.

Ryan and I really don't do that much for the holiday. We try and get sometime to ourselves, but with a new baby (who was still getting over RSV) we couldn't really do much.

I did however want to still make it fun for the kiddos.

Foolishly I pinned some cute homemade valentine's on pinterest and let Sarah pick the one she thought was most fun...

Of course it didn't look that complicated on pinterest... but it was a LOT more work than I had anticipated. 

Sarah loved doing her part though. She patiently went through all 20 valentine's and wrote her little message and signed her name on each and everyone. Even decorated the letters. 

So proud of all her work!

And then my foolishness strikes again for our Teacher gifts. 

I've wanted to make these heart-shaped hot pads for a while, and this was the perfect excuse.

They were SO much more time consuming to make than I expected. Mostly because my binding didn't want to smoothly lay along the edges of the hot pads. They definitely looked homemade.

It is the thought that counts, right?

We did a way simplified version of the hear in Abby's hear this year. 

I actually think it worked out better than the braided version I've done in the past. 

I wish I had more exciting things to share about this lovey, dovey holiday.

I will share some short little things that I love...

I love the sweet gazes I get from lil' miss Emily after she finishes eating. Big sighs full of satisfaction that her round lil' belly is warm and full of milk. 

I love Zak's cuddles. He is still quite my little snuggle buddy. I try my hardest to be patient and remind myself ofter that his constant desire to be near me, touching me or on top of me will fade and I will dearly miss all the cuddling that I enjoy now. My favorite is right after he has woken up. He will climb up onto my lap facing me, lay he head on my chest and gaze up with his big, sleepy eyes and suck on his "plug" and rub his monkey blankie under his nose. He still offers me nose rubs with his blankie.

I love how bright Abby's eyes get. Everything is so exciting to Abby. She tells me every bit of information about her day like it is the best thing in the world. She still cackles and I LOVE her cackle! You always know when Abby is near because you can hear her loud and clear! She is so fun though, I really love my ray of sunshine!

My sweet, sweet, Sarah. I love how obedient and grown up she is getting. Although sometimes I get sad that the time is passing by so quickly, I LOVE having an oldest child that is ever so helpful. I can always count on Sarah to happily answer, "Sure, Mom!" whenever I ask her to do something. I love her big chocolate eyes and her full grin.

I love my wonderful Ryan. It seems like the past couple of years we haven't always had the most quality time together. But I love when we are able to sit and talk and enjoy each others company. I love laughing with Ryan. He has the best laugh. Especially when we are laughing really hard, you know, so hard that you have a hard time catching your breath? Those are the best moments.

Ryan did surprise me with Flowers for Valentine's day. When we were first married I remember telling Ry how I thought sending someone cut flowers is kind of pointless because they just die... but I do have to say. Receiving a bouquet of flowers is pretty fun, and I thoroughly enjoyed getting them!

He is such a nerd, his little note with the flowers said, "I love you sweetheart! And I got you flowers. I hope you like them. Love, Ryan" He should have signed it Captain Obvious. ;) 

The flowers completed the look of our little Valentine's Day mantle. 

Well... that is about enough lovey-dovey-ness that I'm sure any of you can bare reading through... so I'll stop right there.