Whole Lotta Love

All right, I have a confession. I am a hopeless romantic. Hopeless. I have loved romance and romantic comedies for so long. I always tell my kids that the best part of any movie is the kissy part! Valentines Day has always been one of my favorite holidays. I love the idea of having a day to just let people know how much you love them. I ecspecially enjoy giving my kids all the hugs and kisses I want and they don't complain...too much.

When my sister got married, her family in law, introduced her to their tradition at Valentines. She has talked about it a lot, and I decided that I wanted to do it this year. Yes, I stole their idea. But her Mother in Law emailed me that it had been going on for over 25 years now!

Anyway, they celebrate the 14 days of love. A little token of love every day until Valentines Day. So I thought it would be fun to post what I have/will be doing.

Day 1 (today) was a fun note tucked in my kids lunchboxes. Letting them know what I was doing and sharing with them one thing that I love about them. I have a card for my sweetheart but haven't had a chance to surprise him with it. I want it to be found, not handed to him, know what I mean?

Day 2 will be some red Peeps candy that spell I love U and a coupon for one free getting out of walking the dog once. I know they will appreciate that!

So stay tuned, there is a lot of lovin' going on around here!

Holiday lunch bag

One of the things that I try to do is to make lunches fun. And there is nothing like the holidays to make it that way! It is somewhat hard to add things to my kid's lunches because they are not allowed to have toys, cards (like Pokemon)and candy! They can have treats, teachers just prefer no candy.

I like to make their holiday lunches, in the color scheme of that holiday. For Halloween ( I forgot to take pictures) they had orange and black. Their lunch consisted of...

mac & cheese (which I placed a spider ring on top!)
purple grapes
oreos
carrot sticks
grape juice/orange juice
cheetos

(I am sure their teeth were AWFUL after eating cheetos & oreo's! Poor teachers!)

For Christmas I did red & green!

sandwich cut into a tree shape
green bag of Pringles (sour cream & onion)
fruit cup with strawberries
red and green Fruit by the Foot
the bakery had these fun tree cookies. They were $1.24 for 6 cookies. I sent one for the kids and one to share with a friend!

It really is easy to make their lunches fun with very little effort. I am looking forward to a red and pink, heart filled lunch bag come Valentines Day!

Finding a balance

It's been a long time. I don't have an excuse. Just the normal...life, kids, the holidays, church obligations, wardroom (the people Ben works with) obligations...etc. etc.

My life is a little beyond control right now.

Right now I am trying to exercise, lose weight, keep a home running, keep my children alive and well, be a wife, and find some time to myself in there somewhere. So far, I am not managing well!

My kitchen counters are covered with dirty dishes. So this morning, someone had left the lid off of my cookie jar and...it fell and shattered. ): Then my boys got in trouble on the bus, and so I had to go talk to the bus driver. As I was walking back, Ivan wanted to "race." After maybe 5 or 6 steps, pain shot through the back of my left leg. I am now limping as I can't even walk. Get the boys in the car and get to the gate and...my military ID is in Ben's car...clear across island. He is (still) not answering his phone and so he doesn't know what is going on.

And today, like a ton of bricks, I realized I don't have balance. I focus on one thing (right now it's exercise) and let everything else go. Obviously I can't do that. So it's time to realign priorities. I know I can do it! I just need to set some goals. This post is too long already though so I will share them at a later time! (: Until then...