It's All About Love

And yet the middle of February is the time of year I love the least.

Partly that's because of Valentine's Day.  I'm not a Valentine's Day person.  Flowers and chocolates and such are nice but I prefer them on a random basis than on a commercially assigned holiday.  But what really has me disliking the holiday are the school celebrations!  Ask any mom of multiple elementary age kids and she'll probably agree!  This year the PX ran out of Valentine's cards by the time we got there and the Germans only do Valentines for adult couples (nice!) so we had to improvise.  That means that I printed hearts on the computer that said "Happy Valentine's Day from _______".  The kids cut them out and glued them to scrap book paper my mom sent for another project about a month ago (THANK YOU GRANDMA!!!) and then decorated with stickers I found.  Fairly painless but it still took the entire afternoon and evening on the day before.  Blech.  Yay for Abby's teacher though who had them decorate boxes at school and Megan knows what she wants and we had the materials to make it quick and easy!  And it turned out cute!!

Then we have the 100th day of school.  UGH.  This usually involves a project displaying 100 of something that is "sure to be fun for the whole family".  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  First, you have to agree on a project.  Then you have to get the materials.  Then you have to put it together.  Not really fun -- especially when you add in counting to 100 several times before it's done. Oh it's delightful.  This year we have the hiccup of not having access to Hobby Lobby (can I just say how much I miss Hobby Lobby?  It's probably the biggest thing I miss but I suppose I'm saving money now . . . ).  So we agreed to use our massive collection of charms and although I did most of the stringing and drew the outline for the person, Abby did a great portion of the work and it turned out cute.  And I'm glad it's done.

February 18th of course is Aaron's birthday.  Megan asked me the morning of when we were taking presents to the hospital.  I love our little service project!  Next year I might have to see if we can do one for a local hospital but this year of course that didn't happen.  I did sew up 50 Beads of Courage bags and ship them out last Tuesday though.  I love being able to help in some small way at least.  

Grandma sent another package (GRANDMA SAVES THE DAY AGAIN!) and the kids enjoyed those snacks while we watched Trolls as a family.  FYI - weird movie.  They like it.  It's weird.  We've all been going through a round of illness the past few weeks -- nothing terrible, just a cold with fever, but Chopper and Abby both have it right now so we didn't do anything special for his birthday.

But we were incredibly blessed by our friend Chad and his wife Christi who went to the cemetery and placed flowers at the grave for us.  It is such a gift especially this first year being away because the honest truth is that we've felt a little like we've left him behind.  

 Oh some fun news though.  I did an online sew along creating this quilt and won the grand prize!!  It was a random drawing of the finished quilts but hey, a prize is a prize and I'm super excited because I don't know what it is!