Valentine's Fun

Is it mid-February already? Last weekend the kids were going a little crazy from a case of cabin fever...so I decided to take them to the Westerville Rec Center Pool. It is wonderful family fun equipped with water slides, a lazy river, and a water playhouse. They love going and it was a perfect way to keep them busy....unfortunately I had to study, so they got to play and burn off some energy. Matt was running around with his academy friends at the shooting range...totally a boy thing! Here are a few pics of the fun they had...

Valentine's Day has always been fun in our house....this year I was a little exhausted due to the fact that I worked three night shifts in a row this weekend, not to mention the three midterms that I took in the last week. I am a big fan of week-long holidays so we managed to spread this one out as well. Our Valentine's got off to a great start with Blaise leaving a little surprise in our room...

What would this house do with out Blaise's sweet blessings? He snuck into the bedroom and left this little note for us...I found it as I was heading out to a night at work and it was the perfect little pick-me-up to get me through a long night. Both Blaise and Aidan are good at crafting little surprises and leaving them all over the house.

Remember Valentine's boxes...Aidan's class does not officially do one but I wanted her to have a keepsake box for her Valentine's anyway. She loves to write notes to her friends and will re-read all of the Valentine's that she gets over the next year. Aidan and I picked out the materials and I let them design it however that they wanted to. I had a lot of preparing to do for Aidan's classroom party while they designed. Blaise goes to a different elementary school than Aidan and it has been difficult for me to be able to attend both parties. Aidan's classroom is always in desperate need of volunteers, so that is where I have been for the last two. I designed my own Valentine's Bingo cards and made baby Valentine's cupcakes. Bingo was hard due to the language barrier in the Pointview classroom...60% of the student body speaks English as a Second language and it has been hard for me(not to mention the teacher's) to plan games and activities in the classroom. We still had fun and all of the kids are appreciative. Here is a pic of Aidan during quiet reading time which Mrs.Katz claims is here favorite time of the day.....Later the night Matt and I had our own little Valentine's celebration. We took the kids to a babysitter (thank you Kellie Ann) and went to El Vaquero, then to a favorite homegoods store of ours to pick out more decor for the condo...of course I had to be back at work at 10 so we had to cut it a little short! But we had a really nice time just catching up...thank you Matt for everything that you do!

I am a candy Mom...I know that that is horrible, but I think that it is fun to give little gifts that come in such pretty wrappers! I am famous for overloading the Easter baskets, and stockings at Christmas time. These are the kids Valentine's gift baskets!

Cards...Mine from Matt is the first, followed by the ones that Matt picked out for the kids...and lastly is Matt's from me.

I love getting cards...which is one of the reasons that I love Valentine's day! For Matt I went with silly...I can't really say in the blog what the inside said and Matt's was mushy and the sweetest card that he has ever gotten me. The envelope said "a big card for a big heart"...and it was a huge card. I hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday and this week is bringing some big fun so stay tuned......