Sharing the Love

In January, we start planning for our Valentine's visit to a local nursing home with our Sunday School children.  We practice special songs and make Valentines for the residents.  The Sunday before Valentine's Day is a special time where we share God's love with the senior citizens!  It is something we should do more often, truly.

 I remember being a Sunday School kid and singing at the county nursing home.  It was dark, smelled funny, and was a bit scary.  As you can see, our local facility is big, bright, and welcoming.  This is their chapel area, and it is a very special place to be.  I wish we could spend more time with the residents.  They have so much wisdom and love to share with us all.  My favorite story of the day was getting to visit with Delbert K (in the 2nd row, green plaid shirt), a high school classmate of my dad's.  It was so nice to catch up with him and to hear about old times with my dad!

 The girls made their own Valentines for their classmates.  Wynne created a special note for each person in her class, and the twins cut up paper to create some very unique wishes.  Shae's little Valentine guys are holding a stick of gum and saying...

 ..."I chews (choose) you to be my valentine!"  (She came up with this on her own.)

 Paige shared her love for pugs with her friends by cutting out pug dogs that said...

 "Pugs & kisses".  The computer comes in handy for finding images, and Paige even cut curly tails for each card!

 Mark creates the neatest personalized Valentines (complete with a pocket holding your favorite candy) for each of his kids and me.  He slips them into the kids' lockers (or on our desks) and has a special note written for each one of us.  I bought cookie pops from the musical cast (fundraiser) and had them delivered to all of my loved ones at school.  And of course, we were fortunate to have Ally home from basketball on Valentine's Night for our annual "fancy dinner.".  Since I came home at the usual late time on Friday night (ask any Wisconsin teacher how many extra hours they have to put in these days)....Mark was awesome about cooking up the steak & preparing the salad while I got dessert and other foods ready. He even set the table with the fine china & candles! I had actually planned ahead and prepared the potatoes the night before, so I think dinner was served by 7 p.m.

Valentine's Day Dinner 2014

Our guest for the evening was Mark's brother Joey, who is celebrating a birthday at the end of this month.  We all enjoyed a lovely dinner, quiet music, conversation, Princess Potosa Root Beer!

Happy Valentine's Day to all - we are lucky to share the love!