Happy Valentine's Day!

This is the kind of thank-you my Hubby likes when he buys me roses!

We had a nice quiet family Valentine's Day. My favorite kind!

Jewel in her high-chair

I made homemade pink waffles with strawberries and whipped cream for breakfast. It's traditional on Valentine's Day in my house to eat at least one meal that is as pink and red as possible. When I was little, mom would put red dye in our milk for Valentine's Day. We thought it was cool even if it tasted nasty. Now I do Strawberry Quik instead.

The kids all decorated homemade "mailboxes" for our homemade valentine exchange. Einstein got pretty creative with 4 empty wrapping paper rolls. His Mailbox is standing up as high as his chest, attached to those 4 rolls upright like poles...it looks pretty cool!"Just like a REAL mailbox" Einstein says!

Manly bought me a beautiful dozen red roses with baby's breath in a lovely red vase. He also bought me some chocolate fudge, but I'm off sugar again. I was going to let myself have treats on Valentine's Day, but I fell off my no-sugar kick last week when I baked my favorite window cookies for my book club group meeting. One cookie made me go crazy. Before I knew it I was snitching sugary things all the time. It was spiraling out of control in just a few days, so I'm back to my stringent NO SUGAR of any kind allowed. *sigh*This picture cracks me up. This is a perfect illustration of why Laura is doing a "NO SUGAR" diet!!! Notice my rear end? This was so funny, Manly wanted to pick me up and carry me around like he used to all the time back when we were dating and in those newly-wed years. However, after 5 kids I don't have the slight fit figure I once took for granted. The look on Manly's face as he's trying to lift me is hilarious. I wanted to delete this picture, but Manly wanted to keep it "for posterity" he said. "So what for?" I asked, "So all our grandchildren can see I have a big but?"

I got Manly some "smelly" (our term for nice cologne) and Hershey's kisses. And we made handwritten poems for each other. That was the best part! I love to keep those and look back at them years later.making valentine cards

Then we had our family's favorite Valentine tradition: a family scavenger hunt. My parents did that with us kids when we were little and we loved it. At the end of this year's scavenger hunt, the family got a popcorn popper. The kids were pretty excited to watch it work and then eat the spoils! Lots more fun (and healthy) than microwave popcorn. They also got a math game for a Leapster.Duckie is so proud to write her own name!

I also got to take Duckie with me to see my parents sing in a choir concert celebrating Oregon's 150th Birthday today! Happy Birthday Oregon! The concert was lots of fun and we heard lots of great patriotic and folk songs.

Angel is in love with Valentines. Especially Valentine Candy. She asked tonight if we could have more valentines tomorrow. It's just another Christmas to her!

The only sad part of today was that Louisa woke up not feeling herself. She had a low-grade fever and a headache. She participated in the fun stuff, but she wasn't her usual spunky self. She spent most of the day sleeping on the couch.

Louisa is feeling a little bit better, but she's still under the weather.

Manly also had to go to work tonight. But we'll have a special Valentine's date another day!

Happy Valentine's day to you all!