Valentine's Day Traditions

It seems to me that holidays are all about kids. (Now maybe this is because in my life these days nearly everything is all about kids!) It’s hard for me to imagine Halloween without children. Or what about Christmas without kids? And, I even feel the same way about Valentine’s Day.

This might not be how other people feel about Valentine’s Day at all. When most people think of Valentine’s Day, they think of romance and love – adult sort of themes – not children. But I don’t find that part of Valentine’s Day to be all that exciting (maybe that says something about my marriage…just kidding!) Celebrating Valentine’s Day in our house is still a kid-centered activity – and it’s a lot of fun (a little tiring too).

I also think that holidays are about traditions. Some of these are traditions from our families when we were children that we are passing on. But often we have traditions that we start in our own families. I wanted to share a couple of our family’s Valentine traditions.

My family lives in Massachusetts. Our families (just counting parents and siblings) live in California, Oregon, Utah, Wisconsin, Maryland, and New York. Obviously, we don’t see them on Valentine’s Day. So, every year the kids make valentines and we send them to our relatives. We go shopping a few days before and choose out special Valentine’s Day paper, stickers, ribbon etc. Then, we spend a few hours creating the masterpieces. The kids have lots of fun. (I usually want to pull my hair out about half way through the project – but evidently I’m not too terribly traumatized because I still do it again the next year.) This year, while Rachel, Taylor, and Sarah Ann designed their works of art and I helped operate the glue gun and cut our hearts, George (my husband) kept Christian (age 16 months) from climbing on the table and eating their projects. Here's a couple pictures of them.









The other thing we do every year is make heart shaped sugar cookies and decorate them. Here are the girls making the dough.




The past couple of years, we have also had a Valentine’s dinner which involves lots of heart shaped and red food. This year, we invited another family over to enjoy the dinner with us. We had some heart-shaped calzones, red strawberries, and red Cherry 7-Up (and a salad – not red). Then after dinner, all six kids (Christian was banned again, although he did manage to eat quite a few m&ms) decorated cookies.There was lots of giggling at the table as the kids read the messages on the conversation hearts to each other. (What would Valentine's Day be without conversation hearts?)

And tomorrow, my husband and I will go out to dinner by ourselves and have a little of the Valentine’s Day celebration without children!

I just can't resist one more picture - especially since I don't have any of Christian here. While I was trying to get things together for our Valentine's Day dinner, this is what Christian was doing.



(This scene - of Christian and the cat standing on the table - is one that occurs about a dozen times a day at our house.)

Hope you all have a happy Valentine's Day!