This year's "Love" Day was a little different. I was without my sweetheart.
Trev's Grandma Lighten (grandma England) passed away. So he and his brothers, Rich and Dan, flew over there to be at the funeral services. It just so happened to be the same week as Valentine's, our 13th anniversary, and Morgan's 11th birthday.
That week is busy in our house! :)
But don't worry, he made sure to surprise me with gorgeous roses and my favorite Red Velvet Baby Bundt cake - thanks to his personal delivery boy, our nephew Lawson. :)
We stilled missed him a lot - plus I was also 36 weeks pregnant - but the week went just fine and thanks to Voxer we got to talk every day.
Even though my honey was gone, I was still surrounded by my little sweethearts and so we celebrated!
First came the school parties, personalized Valentine's, and treat boxes.
All the school hoopla took place on Friday the 13th (creepy?) since Heart Day fell on a Saturday this year.
I usually help with the school parties and this year I was in Jake's class. I was in charge of the games. The biggest hit was Marshmallow Toss. Marshmallows everywhere but super fun! :)
Here is the card one girl from his class gave him.
Wow. That's real love right there.
When I arrived at his classroom to help with the party, this little girl came up to me, asked if I was Jake's mom, and then informed me she would be marrying him someday!
Good thing she was darling. Just a little too aggressive. Jake was NOT amused. :)
Back to the celebrating...
In preparation for this day, Morgan had a cute friend come over and they did what Morgan loves to do best...BAKE!
She gave these delicious little ladies out to her teachers and closest friends. Oh how she loves this kind of thing!
Then on the ACTUAL Valentine's we had a little celebration of our own.
It started with my treat to them...a LOVE-ly Berries and Cream Waffle breakfast! While I got the food ready, the kids wrote down things they love about each person in our family - which they read aloud as we ate.
Then we did what EVERY kid wants to do on a holiday...SATURDAY JOBS!!!
Oh. Ummmm. Yeah. They had to get done and I was FOR SURE not doing them myself. :)
So I tried to make it fun.
I had a bunch of Valentine's games and the deal was that they had to do a job. When they were all done with one job we would play a Valentine's game.
Then they would do another job...play another game...and so on.
It worked like a CHARM! They were ASKING for more jobs to do!!
It is truly magical what the promise of a few candy hearts can do...
The absolute favorite game however, was the exploding Heart Peep!
It's pretty simple really. You just take a Peep. Put it on a plate. Put it in the microwave and set the timer for 30 seconds.
That thing will blow up a like a balloon!
The laughs and squeals of joy from your children will be deafening.
And they will keep asking for more Peeps to explode!
Note: They don't ACTUALLY explode. Just get really big...so no big gooey mess to clean-up in the microwave. I would not have been on board otherwise.
It was truly super fun to watch them get so excited.
I can't remember the rest of the day but I think we just hung out after that.
It was different than other years. I missed my Valentine. But I sure had fun with the other ones.
And we all felt loved by each other. So that is really what matters most.
It was truly a "Heart"-full Day.
Over the years Trev and I have discovered something...we LOVE to travel!
One of our favorite things is to have an opportunity to go somewhere and spend a little time together coupled with a change of scenery.
The more we go, the more we love seeing new places, cultures, and the wonders of this beautiful planet we are blessed to live on.
Sometimes we go to familiar places - those that we have visited before and loved so much we wanted to go back...and other times we like to visit somewhere new. Somewhere we have never been and want to experience for the first time. :)
Growing up, my family never traveled. We just didn't have the means to. I always wanted to, but just didn't have the opportunity.
Trev was able to travel a little more growing up - especially being on the tail end of the kids (6 out of 7). The babies of the family always seem to get the perks of higher incomes. :)
He went to Hawaii a couple times...
Lots of camping trips...
Just lots of places.
So when we got married, I told him how I wanted to see the world! It didn't matter how long it took but I wanted to travel and visit all the places I had dreamed of growing up.
We decided we would make taking trips a priority in our marriage. We would plan, save, and go on trips - both together as a couple and with our kids.
Over the years we have been blessed to see so many places, and there are so many more on our bucket lists. It gets tricky with soon-to-be 5 kids, but every time we go it reminds me how worth any effort is.
It is something that just bonds us and creates memories that we will always treasure.
Well last month we had another opportunity to go and see.
This time we went back to a place we have been before and loved but wanted to see parts of it we hadn't experienced before...San Francisco!
When Morgan was a baby we took our first trip here. It was our first family vacation! :)
This time we went back by ourselves and it was so lovely!
We started our trip by taking an early flight from Salt Lake and chatting the whole way to the San Francisco airport. I am one of those people that actually likes the "travel time" portion of our trips because it just gives us time to talk without distractions. I don't even remember what we talked about but I am sure it was kids, work, where would visit, etc.
Nothing out of the ordinary but just nice to talk. :)
When we got into the airport we headed straight to pick up our rental car and head OUT of the city!
The first leg of our trip would be to drive the northern California coastline down to Monterrey and Carmel.
It was simply stunning!
It took us awhile to get there because we had to keep stopping to take pictures. It was just too breathtaking to pass up. Plus the weather was perfect! 60's and sunny the entire trip.
We also kept stopping at roadside fruit stands to try all the deliciousness. We both were perfectly fine with our little detours. :)
We skipped on the "larvets" (aka worms) but fell in LOVE with blood oranges!
There would be a few more of these babies to make it into our car over the course of the trip. :)
We also had a really neat experience as we traveled.
As I have mentioned before, last June we started a Home Health Care company - Lighten Home Health. Since that time Trev and the team have been working feverishly to get all the proper accreditations we need to move our company along and into full-swing operating mode.
Well about a week before we left on our trip we had a big survey from the government that we needed to pass to continue the process of accreditation. Long story short, while we were driving along enjoying the beautiful scenery and talking about the business and the lessons we were learning from it - low and behold we got the email saying we had passed and would be moving forward!!! It was such a special moment! One we will never forget.
Can you sense the joy and excitement in that handsome face? We were truly thrilled and it just made our whole trip even better. It was as if Heavenly Father was saying "here you go...have a great time on your trip!" :) What a tremendous blessing!
As we continued our sight-seeing, oohhh-and-awwing journey we stopped at a little restaurant/art gallery. Some of the art was well...let's say interesting. But here were some of my favorite pieces.
As I get older, I seem to really enjoy art a lot more. I feel like it speaks to me and the creativeness inside me. I have a growing appreciation for art that communicates a message in beautiful, inspiring ways.
Plus I love color! Bright colors always brighten my spirit.
Being in beautiful nature has the same effect. Probably because you are surrounded by God's art. And boy is He a great artist!
More on that to come...
