Valentine’s Day is like Christmas around here

My kids love holidays. Each holiday is a day for something special. It always surprises me how much the girls loves Valentines Day. But they do!

This year Ellie focused heavily on her hand made valentines and her box for the class cards. She worked on them for weeks.  Her artwork is gorgeous and her cards are heartfelt. 

Max enjoyed picking out his store bought cards and finished them last minute. He picked out a fun toy to attach to all- the class converted pencil grippies! 

Clair was so excited to make her cards for her friends, and more excited about the fact we were celebrating a day about our love for one another (and that we got to spend the day together)! 

When we woke up, through the haze of morning the first words out of Clair’s mouth as she snuggled me close, “Mommy, I love you. Let’s wake everybody up with a hug and a kiss and a Happy Valentines Day!”

My girl just couldn’t get enough of celebrating our love. I ended up taking her to lunch and we sat close and snuggled through sharing our meal together. She decided for her treat after lunch she would enjoy one of her new lollipops from a classmate. 

Happy girl! Happy Valentines!

She’s growing up

Ellie is quite grown up at 10 years old. She’s starting to spend more time in her bedroom with the radio on and her door shut. She’s often doing art or piddling around, but it’s in private. 

As she becomes more mature the challenge for me is to start talking to her more as an adult. I’m trying and I’m just not good at this. But I really want to succeed here so I’m trying things out. 

The past few days I’ve been really worried about work. Last night I explained the situation at a high level and she really lisened. She asked me questions and wanted to help me solve the problem. Then she prayed for me. What a special girl I have! I love her so much. 

As she grows, memories of childhood flee. But some remain, at least for now. I snapped the below when I kissed her good night. 

Monopoly life lessons

We have recently taught there kids to play monopoly. Ellie’s becoming quiet sufficient at The basics of the board. She knows her way around, gets the concepts, and are super lucky. She starting to know which spot she’s on without having to count them out after she runs the dice. She’s even starting to memorize some of the chance and community chest cards. 

She enjoys playing the game as it means time with me sitting with her engaged. Games is definitely one of the ways the kids can keep my attention. Yesterday we started a game and played for about an hour. She was clearly going to be the winner and she got lucky to hit a big free parking and it was sorely needed. I basically told her the game was over and she had one. She didn’t like that answer because she wanted to extend the game. So she snuck me some money and begged me to keep playing with her.

I decided to entertain and keep playing. We continue to game this evening. Again, she could’ve buried me by putting Hotels on the one set of property she had and when I hit them once I would’ve been Done. However, she wanted to game to go on so she didn’t build her hotels. Instead she sat still with thousands of dollars while I slowly build hotels three and then for other sets. Once that happens, she quickly lost all her money. Even the luckiest Person eventually lands on a property when 70% of the spots are covered in hotels.

As the tides turned she did not want to except that she was done. I was at the point that I was excepting properties for payment of debt. It was then that she landed on Parkplace with the hotel. I told her it was time to call the game. She proceeded to cry a river. At that point in time she thought the world was against her including her brother and sister here were doing nothing at all about this game in fact Meininger own businesses.

I tried to take the moment to explain to her that she had really one long ago if she had just used the money to work for her. I tried to explain that you can’t just leave money sitting around in life, but instead you have to invest and make it do something for you. Otherwise, if you’re not working, you run out of the money.  I told her I thought it was really sweet that she extended the game for being so kind to me, and next time I hope she learned a lesson around needing to make sure she was actually building something and not just counting on winning free parking to get her through the game.

There were a lot of tears in my lap before I was able to redirect her to a project she’s building on the computer. I love family. I love that she still wants to spend time with me. I love watching her learn so quickly at everything. She’s an awesome kid!

Spending some extra time with Max

Today was a great day! I got the chance to spend some extra time with Max doing some chores and some exploring in Frederick. 

We finally got back into town to pick up his new glasses which fit him very nicely. We took the opportunity to enjoy Starbucks as well together before heading into town to see what kind of ice sculptures the local shops had created this year. We spent about 45 minutes walking around and saw many cool ones. We also visited the local toy store and found a few cheap old fashion games to bring home with us. We topped the town off with fancy chocolate truffles from my absolute favorite shop. 

We enjoyed exploring together. He told me tonight how much he loves spending time with me. We need to do this more. Clair is now jealous of course. Oh the balances of motherhood will never be easy. Today was a good day for Max and that is a good day for me!

Best part of my day

Today was a very rough day. Work was more disappointing then it’s been in a long time and has caused large amounts of worry and emotional spend. To top that off, Clair seems to have come down with the stomach bug tonight while we were out and about trying to have a nice evening.

David and Ellie are off at a father daughter dance with some other 4th grade girls. They seem to be having a nice time. 

After getting Clair settled I asked max if he would play some games with me. He decided to embrace the opportunity. He and I don’t get to spend one on one time together nearly enough. We sat by the fire and played 3 games of star wars trouble followed by a game of Othello. He was so sweet and kept a kind and thoughtful attitude the whole time. He was happy and told me he loved playing games with me. He’s a sweet boy and he just loves one on one time. I need to do that more. This time relaxes me and took some of the days worries from me. Thanks Buddy!

Now the two youngest are in bed and lady grey is snuggles on my lap. I will say some prayers and try to rest myself, waiting to see what the night holds for us all. 

(Backup) A day at the science center

This past weekend we decided to take some time to go to the Baltimore science center with the kids. Ellie wasn’t super impressed because she feels she’s seen it, the other two were excited. Once there, all 3 did enjoy their time. 

The hands on exhibits are always best. They start out digging for dinosaur bones and then enjoyed learning about different big weather events such as a tornado or volcanologist eruption. 

A big draw of fun is always being lifted on a bed of nails. Max and Ellie willingly jumped on. Clair was not interested. She did touch the nails and watch her siblings skeptically, sure it would hurt. 

We enjoyed seeing a show in the planetarium too.