Happy Valentine's Day!

Chloe was very excited about Valentine's Day this year and was very in to it. To enhance her eagerness, I made a "special" Valentine's breakfast.

Pink cream of wheat and heart shaped toast. The milk was even pink too. The kids were so excited about it all. They were "tickled pink" if you will.

The babies love hot cereal for breakfast- oatmeal or cream of wheat.

Leah was thrilled!

And can I just say that I love that these two can now feed themselves with a spoon, and quite well, too. Lexi is pretty messy (thank goodness for bibs) but Leah is a very clean eater.

Lexi had two helpings of cream of wheat, naturally.

Here is my best attempt at a group shot of everyone in Valentine's pink and red. Leah was having none of it.

The babies love to "GO" as Leah calls going outside. We left around 9:00 a.m. to go to our MOPS class and as soon as we put jackets on the babies, they know we are leaving and they get so excited.

Good thing we have little rain jackets around here, especially yesterday. It rained like crazy.

The most anticipated part of Valentine's Day was our Valentine's box. At Family Home Evening last week, we talked about love and ways that we can be more kind and loving in our home to each other. As a motivation to be more loving as a family, I told the kids that for the next week, until Valentine's Day, every time they did something kind for someone in the family without being asked, they could put a penny in the box. On Valentine's Day, we would count the pennies and for every penny in the box, they could have a piece of candy.

This was a great motivator for the bigs kids and random acts of kindness were in abundance this past week. There was such a sweet spirit in our home as the kids tried multiple times a day to think of ways to do something nice for someone. At Family Home Evening last night, we counted 51 pennies and Chloe and Mitchell each received 51 M&M's.

I put together a small treat bag for each of them along with a book. My kids love books and I really don't think you can have too many good books.

And what's Valentine's with out a little love?

I love that my two big kids really do genuinely love each other.

I didn't really get the babies anything specifically (oh, I guess they each got a new sippy cup) but they got enough treats in their own way. My visiting teachers came yesterday afternoon and brought me a little baggie of Hershey Kisses. I left the baggie on the computer desk and when both babies came down with chocolate covered faces, I knew something was up.

Chloe and I ran upstairs to find the damage. It could have been much, much worse, but there is nothing that bothers me more than stains on the carpet.

I can only imagine how happy both of them were to share a bag of treats, with no help. I found streaks of chocolate and tin foil wrappers all over upstairs. I wonder how much foil they ate, too...

A little carpet cleaner and some scrubbing took care of the mess easily, and seeing how happy they were with their small treat was worth the mess.

What a fun day.