Valentines

These beauties showed up on our kitchen table Saturday afternoon(Feb 13th).

Sunday morning, these were on my nightstand along with some beautiful earrings and a heartfelt card.  My husband has always been a great gift-giver, and once again, he didn't disappoint.  I have never seen these type of chocolates before, and I'm not usually a big fan of chocolates, but these are "to die for".  My two favorites: the creme brulee, and the lemon tart.  Creme brulee is one of my favorite desserts, and the lemon tart had a liquidy lemon center...yum!  They are now gone, and I want to go find another box!

We usually do a small gift for Valentine's Day for each child, like a book, or maybe a shirt or stuffed animal.  This year, however, they got a little more than usual because both Eric and I ended up getting them something separately.  This book that I made for Alex was supposed to be a Christmas present.  I've have wanted to make it for awhile, and finally got it done just in time to have it shipped for Christmas.  Unfortunately, I didn't check out the price closely enough when I started, it was going to cost me $100 plus shipping.  I was not willing to pay that, so I left it on Shutterfly until they had their best deal.  Finally, for their Valentine's special, I was able to get 40% off plus free shipping which was probably as good as it was going to get, thus, he got it for Valentine's Day!  I think he was excited about it although it's hard to read emotion with him sometimes.

I had a 2 page layout for each grade with his class picture and school picture for that year.  Then on the next few pages I tried to include good friends, school activities, and sports that year.

I picked a couple of my favorites to show.

The book ended with his 6th grade graduation (his elementary school went through 6th grade in Washington).  This was a bittersweet memory because although he was moving onto to middle school, he would be leaving all of his friends for the last 5 years to move to Tennessee about a month after graduation.

Eric got the girls these two adorable bears which they quickly named, "Lena"(pink) and "Morghan" (red).  I got them each a clothing item, which they also liked.

But this little treasure was by far the favorite of the afternoon.  While I got Jarem a cute mini-Lego set, this book was Eric's gift for Jarem.  I'm going to be honest and say that I wasn't particularly thrilled for my sweet little boy to get a farting book, but that's what happens when my husband and his brother shop together. :) To make it even more irresistable for them, their dad's name is Walter, but he goes by "Kent" because he has never liked the name, and farting is a hilarious topic among his family.  Needless to say, Jarem could not stop laughing about it, and his laugh is contagious, so it really turned out to be quite funny.  But, that's not all...

The book was accompanied by Walter the Farting Dog stuffed animal who really farts when squeezed.  Eric proceeded to read the book to Jarem while Jarem squeezed the dog each time it farted in the book.  Eric could hardly read it he was laughing so hard, and each of the kids was nearly rolling on the floor with laughter.  Since then, Jarem has become better friends with Walter than I had hoped.  He now has become his lovable sleeping companion...ugh! 

All in all, it was a great Valentines Day and a fun weekend.  I enjoyed celebrating Tina's birthday with Linda and Elke on Saturday and we also really enjoyed having Kyle and Jessica spend the weekend with us.  It's so great to have some family within a couple of hours, finally.  We love spending time with them.  I liked have Valentines on Sunday because we had an enjoyable and restful Sunday afternoon together.  We laughed a lot about Walter, napped, played games, and ate.