Valentines Celebrations

 We try to have Valentines be a fun day for the family. Both of the kids were excited to give out Valentines at school. Their classes were, thankfully, still doing the tradition. Many of the schools in the area opted to not do it for COVID reasons. 

We sat down as a family to build a Lego Valentines Day box for Lucky Dragon. It turned out really awesome. He was excited and said that all of his classmates liked it so much "they gave me two candies!" 

We had a big week just before this, so we wanted to keep it low key. But when I took the Muggles to Sam's Club with me to get some groceries, they both wanted to choose some flowers for Lady Hiva. They chose some beautiful roses!~ 

We then did some Valentines for their classes and for a family party with Madre and Kell and family. Koala Bear was great in writing all of her own Valentines. I thought she would give up, but she never did. This girl powers through! 

Lady Hiva was so excited that her university offered an online cooking class. They sent her the food and then they all jumped on to cook together. She had so much fun and Koala Bear did too. She is growing into a great cook and baker like her mum. The dish they created was a Thai curry chicken. It was AMAZING! So much so, we went and bought all the ingredients to have it again. I was in class teaching so Lady Hiva saved me a plate of it. When I came down to eat she told me "it is so good that I licked my plate clean..." I laughed thinking she was just using hyperbole. But when I finished my food, I too, licked my plate (Something neither of us ever do!). 

Every time that it is a chance to celebrate Lady Hiva, Lucky Dragon wants to get her flowers and chocolate. He knows that not just any chocolate, but See's chocolate. (She has trained him well with the chocolate. The flowers he chooses roses every time. Something that he likes, but they are not necessarily her favorites). Lady Hiva had gone to Costco while I was working and she came home and told me, "I bought gift cards for See's for you to give to me to save you time!" LOL

I decided to do something funny for Lady Hiva. I took some of our favorite foods and made notes! It was fun. 

Then in the evening we went to eat at a Thai restaurant. Last year we did Indian food, so this year was Thai food! 

We drove down to Beaver in the snow (I feel like we have had more snow in FEB and the end of JAN than we received the rest of winter combined!). 

Lady Hiva's whole goal was to get Ginger's recipes. The two of them had so much fun talking about recipes while we smelled warm fresh bread. 

Valentines: Kissing Girls and Losing Teeth

So beyond Christmas there are not many holidays that I get excited for...or at least that used to be the case. However, as our little Muggles are growing I find I get more and more excited because they are excited. That has been true of Halloween the last few years. Now, before you get any ideas, Halloween will NEVER be something I am truly excited about, it is merely something to pass them time until 1 November when the Christmas season can start without Lady Hiva throwing a fit. tee hee. But seeing the joy that Koala Bear and Lucky Dragon has around the holiday is a bit infectious.

Well, I realized this year that Valentines is the same way. It is not a holiday that I have paid much attention to in the past. In fact, even the years that I did do something special it ended up...well, meh. (See the post from last year when Lucky Dragon and I re-created a Beauty and the Beast theme for Lady) But this year was so much fun. We had the Muggles participate in the process. Lucky Dragon and I planned out for weeks what we were going to do for Lady Hiva. Notice I said we planned for weeks...that was deliberate, I have been accused of just getting something the day of. Which is NOT true, sometime I buy it the day of because Lady Hiva cannot keep her little curious eyes to herself. Hahaha.

When I asked Lucky Dragon what he wanted to get his mum, he said with excitement and a gleam in his eye, he wanted to get her "chocolate! She loves chocolate! And flowers." I then asked him what kind of flowers and he said, "Roses. Red roses, of course." As matter of factly as a little guy can, as if I would have thought any other type of flower existed!~ So cliche as it sounds we went out to hunt for flowers and chocolate. I did persuade him to get some other things too so I would not be accused of thoughtlessness again. We bought a new water bottle for her. It is a simple gift but Lady Hiva and I do not go anywhere without water bottles. Something we started when we lived in Manila, Philippines and have never stopped. So far we have used Nalgene bottles but I have recently transitioned to the metal vacuum insulated bottles and loved it. So we went online and picked the color that Lucky Dragon thought she would like. It took some convincing that although he and i would like the pink version that Lady Hiva would actually rather have the green or teal. We also bought her some bath bombs. You should have seen the two of us in the store smelling all the options and laughing at each other as we made faces to a particularly horrible smell.

When we went to go get the flowers though, my little man decided that colorful tulips were better than red roses! WOW! So the Beauty and the Beast training was not as ingrained as I thought. Tulips were a better fit for his springtime flower loving mum. Don't fret, however, he did get his sister a Lego Duplo Beauty and the Beast set! I bought the perfect 3D card (that I had found months ago and just did not buy because she would find it) that featured the Eiffel Tower and talked about life being an adventure. Normally I think the card words are corny and fake so I always opt for blank cards. But this one was perfect. I was glad I still found it so many days later.

He arranged the flowers himself

He was so excited to give her the gifts we actually gave them to her the day before. I cut the tulip stems and he arranged them all by himself. Then he banished her to her room upstairs while he set all the gifts up for her on the dining room table. The joy these two little people had while we were doing it was priceless--corny I know, but what about Valentines isn't corny? Koala Bear did not understand all that was going on but knew it was exciting and could not help but want to help. She settled on priding herself on naming the colors of the flowers instead of trying to rearrange them after she had been scolded by her perfectionist brother a few times when she 'helped.' She kept yelling, "Happy Birthday Mummy!" (yes, thank you Peppa Pig for her British accent when she says "Mummy" and "Daddy!")

That night Lady Hiva and I blew up balloons and filled the downstairs with a layer of balloons. Can I say that I am thankful for bike tire pumps? My arms were sore by the time I was done, but that was nothing compared to how my cheeks would have felt if I had done them the traditional way.

Koala Bear woke up and came downstairs just as we were finishing. It was so cute to see her jump out of the half asleep mode and exclaim, "Balloon! Oh YES!! Balloon!" So we stood there, halfway in the dark in the middle of the night watching her run back and forth through the balloons squealing with delight. A moment unexpected, but completely a treasured one.

In the morning Lucky Dragon woke up all excited, completely forgetting Valentines at all. His first tooth had fallen out. He can running in yelling, "I have something to show you! My tooth fell out! I thought I was chewing on a Lego!" Which by the way, could have happened, we constantly have Legos all over the house as he builds and creates. He knew his tooth was loose so he had a small Lego treasure chest sitting on the kitchen counter for the last few weeks waiting for his tooth. That it fell out on Valentines made the jokes about whether he had kissed a girl and that is why his teeth fell out more fun. He did not appreciate that--at all. Now I think about it, I am not sure why that is an old joke either. What are you eating that causes your boyfriend/girlfriend's teeth to fall out after you kiss? Hahaha.

Lucky Dragon made his own Valentines box for school and was extremely proud of it. I was proud of him too. He definitely has his own creative style. We see that in his Lego creations, his painting and coloring and anything else he creating. He was happy to show us all the Valentines he was given. I was given a shirt and some AWESOME socks to wear. We gave him a UofU hat and a treasure chest of "gems."

We had a candlelight dinner together as a family. Complete with ice cream and chocolate covered strawberries and raspberries. We finished the night playing games together. The favorite with the Harry Potter version of Code Names.

It was an amazing day. I am so glad we had a chance to celebrate our little family.

Lucky Dragon's self-made Valentines box