Feelin' the Love

It's no secret that my daughter will seize any opportunity to decorate, celebrate, and party. Valentine's Day is certainly no exception. A week or two ago she took it upon herself to make some Valentine's decorations for the front windows. Just simple paper cutout hearts with "candy heart" messages such as "Be Mine" and "Text Me", this was the extent of the Valentine decor around these parts.

Then, a week ago Sunday she spied the Walgreens ad full of Valentine's goodies and spent a good, long while drooling over the wares. "Oh Mom, this Valentine's Webkinz is SOOOO cute!" and "Oh, I sure would LOVE to get a Valentine's Beanie Baby." This is her not so subtle way of dropping hints for me. She knows, or at least she thinks she knows, that if she doesn't say something then nothing will happen, but she doesn't want to be too obvious so as to elicit an out and out no from me. Earlier in the week she had made a comment about the Valentine's Day a few years ago when I had given them each a little stuffed animal with a homemade Valentine's card and how that was the BEST Valentine's ever!

Yesterday, I could tell she was feeling a little dismal, I think she could sense that I hadn't done anything and wasn't planning on doing anything for the special day. She made a comment about how Valentine's Day was such a boring holiday because all they ever do is have a party at school. I had to bite my tongue not to laugh. She is so dramatic, that one. You have to live with her to get the full effect of her drama.

Off to school they went this morning with nothing more than a "Happy Valentine's Day" and a "Don't forget to take your Valentine's" from me. While they were gone Rex, Colby and I went and got some balloons, candy and bubbles and a little something for each of them. Colby picked out mini sports balls, Rex- a hulahoop, for Owen a water gun, Gracie- her beloved Valentine's beanie baby, and for Matthew (what do you get an 11 year old boy for Valentine's Day?) a small pack of Pokemon cards. Then we arranged everything on their beds for them to discover when they got home from school.

On our way home from school Gracie was asking if we were going to do anything fun today and I said I didn't think so. She slid further into her pouting state. For some reason when we got home nobody went into their room. I was so proud of Rex for not spilling the beans because I wanted this to be an unspoiled surprise. FINALLY, after an hour or two one of them went in there and excitedly came running out. They were all so surprised and happy that it made me feel good I had actually gone to the trouble. Instantly, Gracie's mood changed and it suddenly turned into the BEST Valentine's Day ever!

She ran off to make plans for dinner. She made the flowers for the dinner table out of tissue paper and nametags for everyone's plate. Owen commented that he thought the flowers were real and this made me smile. We had heart-shaped pizza from Papa Murphy's for dinner, with pink lemonade served in Valentine's cups, of course. Luckily, Vaughn and Kindra stopped by to drop off chocolate covered strawberries and yogurt dipped pretzels for dessert (yummy!) which saved me from having to bake heart-shaped brownies. We finished off the night with family home evening (this is three whole weeks in a row)! And it was even on how we can find love in our families. We were definitely all feeling the love tonight!

(No, that's not a ghost in the middle of our picture, it's a fingerprint smudge on the camera lens.)

What I Miss...

About Rexburg

(besides the obvious things like Michelle and her fam, the in-laws, our friends, the schools, the small town community...)

Harper's Homemade bread. Seriously the best white bread ever. I love it. I still miss it every day. And at around $2 a loaf it's a deal that can't be beat. I wish they sold it here...

A nice, toasty heater in the bathroom. Ugh, I can't stand getting out of the shower these days!

Yummy, yummy snow cones (with cream) for cheap, cheap, cheap! What else can I say!

Pizza Pie Cafe's (formerly Craigos- sniff, sniff) oreo dessert pizza. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.

This beautiful view of the temple from the back windows of our house.

Ohhhh, Rexburg- I do miss you, I really, really do...some of you...well most of you...or certain months of you...ah well, but that's a post for another day!

Girl Power!

Last Saturday Gracie had her fellow girl cousins (at least the ones who live here and are old enough to party) over to celebrate their girliness (they all happen to be the only girls in their families). I was less than enthused with the idea and tried to put it off for awhile. Anything that requires extra effort on my part is usually met with my sincere desire to not partake. She was persistent in her plans and proceeded to make lists of all the party would involve. She even made invitations, leaving the date and time blank until she could coerce one out of me. I finally caved and told her a date and time far into the future (like 3 weeks) but she was so excited she could hardly stand it. She handed out the invitations the next day and then excitedly looked forward to the date of the party. I'm pretty sure a day didn't pass where it wasn't mentioned. Finally, the weekend of the party was around the corner and I resigned myself to the inevitable. I had to call my sister-in-law to confirm the time since we hadn't written it down anywhere and neither Gracie nor I could remember the time. I think I was hoping that it had been so long that nobody would have taken it seriously or remembered it. Unfortunately Luckily, Kindra told me that Macie had put the invitation on her fridge and had been asking her every day if it was the day of the party yet. So Gracie and I started talking activities and supplies, which was left mostly up to her. She was in charge of it all, all I had to do was drive her to the dollar store and provide the cash for the goods. Which wasn't much, we only spent about $10 total. This is one of the great things about Gracie, she loves to do these things and she will take the initiative to make it all happen. She is so much more creative and fun than I am.

Here's the sign from the front door. Nothing fancy but I thought the girls skirts made out of cupcake holders were a cute idea, which I of course had nothing to do with.

They began with making jewelry, beaded bracelets, necklaces and pins. Then they made fancy fans (that was my one contribution). They had a little grape koolaid tea party with blueberry muffins.
That was followed by makeovers and dressup.
I wish I would've taken more pictures of this part.

Gracie modeling the giant diamond ring from the goody bags. They also contained cute little tiaras, a magic wand, flower hair barrettes and of course some balloons and bubble gum.

They ended with ice cream sundaes.

Much giggling and girliness abounded and a great time was had by all. They decided to rotate the fun to each others' houses every year. Next year it's Audrey's turn!