Valentine's Day & Chinese New Year~

Our day of love began with love notes from dad all over the house~

I didn't really have anything special planned but with a little creative juices flowing, we made heart toast with pink jelly~

And wrote loved notes on their plates.

 We made love potion milk and ate chocolate roses from Mimi & Logan~

Everyone had a morning of playing while listening to stories~

For lunch I wrote love notes plates again and we read this sweet book together~

We decided to celebrate CNY too with PF Changs for dinner~

Scott and I were SO happy to get a new hot water heater for Valentine's Day and the kids loved it too because of the box~

The kids got red envelopes with a blizzard coupon inside and I took a photo of them with the Year of the Dog Macy~

Celebrations are our favorite and we had a ball!

Happy Valentine's Day~

It was a very sweet Valentine's Day for our crew~

 I got flowers and the kids opened lots of cards~

 We also made cupcakes and delivered to some of our favorite Valentines~

 AND look at my beautiful new cookware!!!~

Scott and the big girls gave me two of them for my birthday,
and I got the medium one for V's Day!
Perfect color too, right!?!?!
And LOVE my Valentine man!!!!!~

A Happy Valentine's Day!!!

Valentine's Weekend~

Scott and I have been celebrating Valentine's Day for 32 years.

The left is our first when I was a freshman in college with braces and a perm

and the right was Saturday evening after I had lost the fight with a migraine all day long~

 I finally was able to get up and shower in hopes for our date... it was touch and go
but ended up having a wonderful time with my Valentine!!!
The bigs certainly had plenty of sweetness as well~

Today Scott made us heart pancakes with spinkles

and we loved going to church then back home for lunch together~

I wrote about Valentine's Day :Love and Joy @ A Beautiful Symphony

Sure hoping your Valentine's Day was sweet and full of love!!!

More Valentines~

Valentines from way back~

and the Originals~

BC & Savannah/Josh, Hayden & Rosie, and Logan & Amelia!

SO thankful for every single one!!!

Love Wins Again~ {Happy Valentine's Day}

"Love isn't something we do, it's someone we become."

~Bob Goff

This quote spoke volumes to my heart this morning when I heard pitter patter of little feet

headed into the family room where they greet me every single morning.

This morning was so sweet because the 4 younger were SO excited for THEIR surprise

{candy for breakfast and painting party}~

But EK and SJ couldn't wait to GIVE their surprises to everyone!

How can I even do justice to this post?

You've read over and over on my blog of the deep hurt and abandonment

our adopted children came from and through.

I can't even describe the depth of it mainly because I didn't live it myself...

I've just experienced pieces of it as my children have healed and are still healing,

as they have struggled through great fear and sadness,

as their behavior has shown hurt when words couldn't explain,

when crying and sobbing from night terrors interrupted rest,

when I got up 20 times a night or rocked them for hours to BE love.

I am NOT tooting my horn or wanting accolades!!!

I deserve none because I was broken right along with them

learning to parent and love in a whole new way I had in the past.

I have found in my own family of adopted children,

some hurts take much longer to heal than others and much patience is required.

TODAY I saw miraculous fruit from Being Love for one that never knew it

before she came to be in our family.

It has taken all 9 years of her being home to Be Love to others

and this morning, she was LOVE big!

She handed me a bag with little letters she made from bands that said LOVE

and the most beautiful card of words I can imagine~

 I couldn't hold back the tears and it was hard for her to understand them

but I saw the Love all over her face, in her hug, and ease of her manner!

THEN she pulled out the sweetest card for SJ~

Bringing SJ home was a great part of EK's healing over the last 4 years!

The two of them made the other 4 a card and drew little pics of things about them.

They were all loved on by lots of family~

and they can't WAIT for their Bigs to get the Valentine boxes in the mail!!!

WE all miss you three today but know YOU

are such a huge part of the LOVE shown today.

I see all three of you shining out of EK and SJ.

Being love to them has allowed them to Be Love themselves.

I hope this all makes sense.

I know it does to other adoptive families

and pray it encourages just exactly who God would choose.

Blessings and love on this beautiful Valentine's Day!!!

Love Wins Again!

Happy Valentine's Day Eve~

Valentine's Day~

I pulled out lots of things to make Valentines 

and loved how our devotional was about spreading love~

We made cards, love bugs, and painted too!

It was a sweet day~

Full of Little Love!!!

A Week of Love~

I pulled all the books I could find about love and we are reading them this week.

Our week began with our KidSpring videos~

SJ chose this book as our first of the week and we ADORE it~

The next book was a stretch... the love for our crayons~

 and from the faces below, it is now our FAV book right now... especially the peach page!!!~

 Bitties not sure what all the laughing was about~

 Found SJ reading the peach page over and over~

 For the bitties, I cut hearts from sticky paper~

and let them stick foam stickers, reg stickers, and really anything they could find.

I think they made about 3-4 each... a great Valentine activity!!!

Happy Valentine's Day~

1 Corinthians 16:14
Do everything in love.

The LOVES of my life~

Scotty, Josh, Savannah {Ben Curtis}, Amelia, and Rosemary~

The Originals!

1 Chronicles 16:34
  Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; 

his love endures forever. 

In God's great love, He gave us 6 beautiful gifts forever~
{Our School Day}

We long to have you home sweet Holly and prayed for you to feel God's LOVE holding you fast as you slept.

John 13:34-35
  "A new command I give you: Love one another. 

As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  

By this all men will know that you are my disciples, 

if you love one another."

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

Fun Friday~ {Happy Valentine's Day}

Today was all things Love and Hearts!

We have two 'heart' babies in the house so this speaks near and dear to this momma's heart!

1 Corinthians 16:14

"Do everything in love."

Reading:

We began our day remembering The Bible is God's Love Letter to us because it says in 1 John 4:8~

"Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love."

We also read from our wonderful God's Love devotional~

 The last page being a precious prayer I prayed over our children...

big and little!

We also read Guess How Much I Love You and It's Valentine's Day! 

Writing~

Yesterday we had about run out of things to do being cooped up inside and snow playing done for the day when I found a great tutorial on book making~

How to Make a Sketchbook from a Sheet of Paper. 

I had the girls watch and try their own.

Well that was perfect because they spent the rest of the afternoon making and writing books upon books.

Today it paid off because everyone used one to make a little book about things they LOVE~

 

We read them to each other and glued into our journals!

1 Chronicles 16:34

"Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever."

Art~

Our wifi has been out the last couple of days so I had to pull ideas from what I already had and go with it.

I had them trace half hearts on the fold and cut...

they were SO excited when they ended up with hearts~

 We also traced different sizes and dot painted them.

We each made a love bug with the cut out hearts and glued to our masterpiece.

Finally we added the extra hearts and called it beautiful!

Psalm 85:10

"Love and faithfulness meet together; 

righteousness and peace kiss each other."

We also strung beads to pipecleaners and made heart bracelets~

 Good fine motor as well as patterning.

Psalm 33:5
"The LORD loves righteousness and justice; 

the earth is full of his unfailing love."

Math~

I had some foam hearts which we placed in a bag and each took turns pulling one to record on our graph~

It was fun seeing which one would Win as they say and we did some other skills as well... adding, most/least/equal.

John 13:33-34

"A new command I give you: Love one another. 

As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 

By this all men will know that you are my disciples, 

if you love one another."

And THE most important part of Fun Friday...

Cooking~

Basically we just ate the cookies our daddy bought for our Valentine's snack! 

Easy and yummy!

John 14:15

"If you love me, you will obey what I command.

Overall I would say everyone had a VERY Fun and Happy Valentine's Fun Friday!!!
{We also made the sun catchers you see in the background with torn tissue paper and sticky paper}

1 Corinthians 13:13
"And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."

 

 

Happy Valentine's Day~

From our little Loves~

 (Payne tried a little too hard to smile. :)

For a glimpse into our BIG day, check out our school blog...

Growing Whole Hearts. 

 

Valentine's Day~

A Very FUN and FULL day...

Tried to get a group photo with 'their' choice of red, pink, or white outfits... SJ chose to wear all three~ :)

EK has been reading our Bible study each morning.

We read Valentine stories and started on an art activity~  

 We made LOVE butterflies and I painted everyone's hands to create a new art display wall. PC has had his hand painted before but EC was in complete awe of every step~

 Each one made a list of people and things they love on a big heart and then we were off to the kitchen for playdough making and cookie decorating~

 We had a LOVEly Valentine's Day!

Love 15~

I LOVED Valentine's Day for many reasons...

mainly because of the LOVE of my life~

 We thought about going out with our crew for about a minute

and decided staying home, building a fire, and cooking

for the ones we Love was the most romantic evening

we could imagine... It Was!

 I think the photos speak for themselves...

we are crazy about each other

and can't imagine life without the other~ SO blessed!

The rest of the day was just as lovely...

EK and Scott were off to Donuts with Dad~

Rosie was off to school~

and two littles left to anticipate going to EK's Valentine dance~

They ALL had a ball!

Dinner was a big hit~ Fajitas and cupcakes!

 Loved having Hayden over~

 Only thing that would have sweetened the day...

having Josh, Savannah, Amelia, and John Daniel home.

We LOVE you all!!!