Happy Valentines Day & Hyvaa Ystavan Paiva

February 14, 2008

Happy Valentines Day & Hyvaa Ystavan Paiva

(Finnish: Happy Friends Day)

I love this wreath on Jonathan’s Preschool teacher’s door.

Valentine Poem for Joseph

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling) i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

e e cummings

The girls received love notes, heart capris, and pink and white shirts to wear to school. (The day after a big winter snowstorm that kept Joe on the freeway for three hours coming home from Murray).

Jonathan was the star student in his Rainbow Preschool class. He brought doughnuts with Valentine sprinkles to his classmates for snack time and Spongebob Valentines (funny little man). He surprised me when I came to pick him up by fishing in his bag and saying, “I have a Valentine for you, Mother.” “You do?” “Yes.” He took out a large Granny B Valentine sugar cookie, took off the valentine card with another child's name on it and handed it to me. What a sweet thing he is and to do.

Girls had fun at Valentines Day parties at school. Rebekah got some candy bracelets and play dough and a dinosaur but began to cry as she compared her 24 pupil allotment to Hannah’s 29. We went upstairs where I could nurse Susannah and read Love books aloud to the children. We read Arthur’s Valentine, of course. My favorite book this year is a book called I Love…translated into English from French. We had fun reading about this little girls "loves” and thinking of our own loves.

I ran around potted hyacinth bulbs to friends and relatives.

Susannah wore the cute Happy Valentines Day outfit from Dave and Hyea Won.

Mom Campbell brought balloons on sticks, heart stress relievers, bagels and boxes of macaroni and cheese and a box of dark chocolate cherries over for Valentines and looked at all the construction Del Hutchings is doing enclosing our breezeway and installing new doors on our house with Mr. Cox.

Joe and I exchanged small presents and ate a homemade dinner upstairs watching “On Becoming Jane,” a movie about the life of Jane Austin starring Anne Hathaway.

The children had their own little dinner and movie downstairs on their own like the Boxcar Children.

[Mom and Dad Clayton treated us to a Valentines Day date on February 6 at the Hale Center theater. We watched a romantic comedy called “Don’t Drink the Water” by Woody Allen about a U.S. Embassy in Russian and Americans that get trapped there during the Cold War. We went with Lisa and Stu and Sydne Tebbs watched our little ones. Lots of fun!]

What love we have to share and how lucky we are to live when and where we do! God surely does bless us!