Happy Valentine's Day with a little goof up. Dedicated to Jacob Wynn

If ya'll follow my blog then you have probably seen on your dashboard where I started this post last week. It ended up showing my pictures as blank squares and I'm just now able to work on it. I love Valentine's Day! Of course that's not always been true. I especially loved it the years I had a boyfriend on that day, but for most years I loathed it. Ha ha But before boys actually mattered in my book, I loved the innocence of Valentine's Day. When you got ready for your Vday party at school and the night before you chose a special valentine card to give to each individual classmate. It was so special and lots of fun. Back then you were given a Vday card from each individual student because your teacher had sent a list home with all your classmate's names. I'm hoping that's still the policy of all schools because I seen something in the news about a mayor of a certain town proclaiming that each student had to receive a Valentine from each classmate or the exchanging of Valentines wouldn't even be allowed. Why was that even a problem? This shouldn't have been happening anyway. Common courtesy is that everyone should receive a Valentine regardless. Kids can be so cruel sometimes and Parents shouldn't allow it to happen. Why am I on this?????? So back to my post........

My kids had a blast filling out their valentines.  Amelia refused any help at all and Titus wanted more help than he needed and Josiah was having a hard time tearing his cards apart without ripping them and finally I called Daddy in for help and things went a lot smoother.  Since Amelia isn't in school yet she didn't really have many friends to send her cards to so we mailed some off to our cousins and friends.

On Valentine's Day the kids were excited to have their party at school.  They left with their Valentines and a cake pop for each classmate that I slaved over the night before.  Next time, I'm using marshmellows.  It would save me probably close to 2 hours.

While they partied, I was busy all afternoon playing cupid.
And this is when my goof up happens.

When I was in school growing up or even when I worked before having my kids, I loved receiving flowers or gifts.  I just loved everything about it so I like to do that now for others when possible.  Our church is fairly small, but that doesn't mean that the kids we have don't deserve to be treated special.  So I figured since we honor our moms and dads on Mother's Day and Father's day, why not honor our kids on Valentine's Day.  So I had ordered a few treats from Heather Wright, who graciously allowed me to order at the last minute.  God love her heart.

Once we had received our treats, Amelia and I took off to different schools to have those delivered to our kids from church.

We stopped off at our Christian school first to deliver to my 2 boys and our pastor's daughter.  Titus had gotten a balloon and a pretzel rod dipped in nuts and candy.  He was so excited about getting that balloon and "birdseed thing" when I later picked him up.  Too funny!!!

I made a trip to another school and dropped off Candy Apples to some more sweet kids of ours.

Then I had a kid that went to another Christian school so I headed out to deliver our last apple and be done for the day.

I headed to his school and parked.  Amelia and I got out and proceeded to the front of the building.  We even paused to take this picture.

Cupid's Princess Assistant

Amelia insisted on wearing her tiara and somedays it just easier to go along with her than argue, so that's what we did.

After I took her picture I was greeted with a policeman at the door.  He put his hands on his hips and declared:
Cop: "Ma'am, you can't come in here right now."
Me: "Why not?"
Cop: "We have MH in here right now."
Me: "What's that?"
Cop: "Ma'am, look behind you."

And that's when I realized what that big white van was when I first walked up.  I had seen it, but thought it was a van that belonged to the school.

Laurel County Correctional Center

I'm not gonna lie.  I'm still not sure what "MH" is, but I do know what Laurel County Correctional center means.  I did later google "MH" and it seems like it could mean "Mental Health".  I didn't realize that jails had a "mental health" department, but of course I'm not real familiar with jails at all which is a good thing, I suppose.

I immediately feel the "Protector" come out in me.  Even though Jacob is 15 and a bigger built guy, I was scared he was in trouble.  Not only him, but all these other poor kids in this school.  Here they are in class and the jail work release program is in the school and no one is allowed to even go in there???

AMY TO THE RESCUE!!!!!!!!!!!

Me:  "Oh my goodness!  Are the kids ok?"
Cop: "Kids???"
Me: "This is Cornerstone Christian School, right?"
Cop: "No, Ma'am.  This hasn't been a school in over 3 years now."

So I am quite embarrassed, but very thankful I didn't shove past the cop to make a rescue mission to save Jacob.  So Jacob, I'm sure you will read this and just know that I've got your back. Ha ha

I was directed to the correct place and Jacob was soon delivered his apple.

Things like that just seem to follow me, don't they???  That's what makes my blog so interesting, I suppose.  If you can call my life interesting!!!!

After Maynard got off work he mentioned taking me out to eat, but I wasn't expecting him to want to because everything was going to be packed and he had to work the next day.  We made a quick phone call to Mamaw and Tara and they agreed to watch the kids for us and even offered to order them a pizza.  Whoo hoo!  Me and Maynard quite rarely ever get to go anywhere by our lonesomes.  So getting to out for Valentine's Day dinner was a special treat.  A big thank you to my Mother in Law and Tara for watching the kiddos for us a couple of hours.  One hour was to wait for our table and the other hour was for us to eat and to make it back to their house.  Everything was packed out, but we sure did enjoy our time together.

Our selfie showing the empty seats behind us.

My valentine gifts from Maynard.

I'm not a flower loving person.  I'm just not.  (unless they are delivered to me, ha ha.  Isn't that awful?)  Maynard got me these beautiful Chevron oven mitts.  Which is really sweet because my old ones were wearing thin and had holes in them.  I thought it was pretty thoughtful of him to think to buy those for me.

After our dinner, we went to pick up the kids and this is how I found them.

Crazy straw glasses



That was our Valentine's Day for 2014.  I hope everyone had a great one like we did!!!!!!


 

Sledding and Swimming all in the same week

 You know what we love?  A big snow.  One that you can play in and build things.  The weather was calling for a big snow during the night, but it never came.  I kept checking out the window and didn't see anything.  It was on a Saturday and Maynard had to go to work.  He left and I checked the window one more time around 7 and here the snow came.  It snowed hard and the ground was completely covered in about 20 minutes.  It continued to snow all morning and we ended up with about 5" of snow.  The kids were chomping at the bit to go out and play, but I wanted them to wait at least until after lunch to give it time to warm up.  Maynard called and said that the roads were too bad and his boss had called all his Fed ex trucks back in.  Yay!!!  We hate that Maynard has to work on Saturdays so we were all excited that he was getting to come back home and hopefully play in the snow with the kids.  I mean us.  Ha

After supper, we all headed outside for fun.  We had a hard time finding all the missing gloves and hats, but soon found out that socks would work just find for one hand.

The snow was perfect.  First off we headed to the side of our yard that has a big hill (not real big, but good enough for sledding) and went sledding.  We were having a blast.  Amelia went down once with me and kind of liked it.  Then she headed down by herself and HATED it and after that she was done.  She wanted to build a snowman.  Which we tried, but I never could get the snow rounded enough to make a snowman.  So our snowman ended up being part of a snow fort.  That was a lot of fun to build.  We used buckets and coolers to make all different shapes for our fort.

 

 Titus was outside longer than any of us.  That boy loves the outdoors.
Amelia was good for about an hour and then she was cold.  She is like an old lady when it comes to being cold.  She hates it!!!  She decided to go on inside and watch from the door where it was warmer.  We were about half frozen and played out ourselves when I told Maynard to come on.  Let's go down the hill one last time.

So we did.

Wish we hadn't, but we did.

We have this on video, but it ain't pretty so I thought I would spare you all.  I went down the hill and ended up hitting a hole and the sled came to a complete stop and I rolled off.  My neck made a horrible popping noise and I thought I had broke my neck.  I was seriously afraid to move yet Maynard was laughing at me.  I ended up being ok, but had a stiff neck for several days.  It's always that one last time that  you wish you hadn't done something, ya know? Ha

We went inside to warm up and I made peach cobbler and snow cream.  It was delicious.

Titus was a bit leery of the snow cream.  He just didn't get it that I was gonna let them eat snow out of the yard.

Oh, I just have to add this picture of him while he was praying for lunch.  I meant to video him, but instead took a picture.  His prayer was cracking us up and at the very end he said, "Dear Jesus, Please help all those that are cold today and don't have air conditioners."  Ha ha  Isn't that the sweetest????

 After our snow was about gone and the temperatures were staying in the single digits, Mamaw and Papaw paid us a surprise visit.  They were on their way to Tennesse for a Ministers Conference and stopped by to eat breakfast with us.  The boys were at school so Amelia had them all to herself.

She wasn't real happy when they left, but the boys were even more unhappier when they found out that she got to eat breakfast with mamaw and papaw.

Friday afternoon after the boys were home from school there was a knock at the door.  YAY!!!!  Mamaw and Papaw was here.  We ate supper with them at Cheddars and then Papaw said he had a surprise for the kids and they needed to stop by his motel room.  The kids had no idea what it was, but I already did and was prepared.
They thought they might get to stay all night with Papaw, but they wasn't sure.  Papaw whispered in their ears and told them that they could go swimming.  Yay!!!  What an awesome surprise.  They quickly changed and in the pool they went.  Me and Mamaw swam with them and that made it even more fun.  I believe my kids are part fish.

 

We didn't have floaties and she decided she wasn't afraid of the water this time.  What a perfect time, right?

I couldn't keep the boys out of the 5ft water.  They can swim some, but I'm afraid that if they panicked they would all of a sudden forget how to swim.  A fear of one of many of mine, I'm afraid.  They done great.  They swam and flipped and jumped.  Had a great time.

We swam for a couple of hours and by this time it was getting late so we had to get out, dry off, and change.  Then we had to make a run from the pool to the car and not freeze to death.  The kids went straight to their rooms and went to sleep.  They didn't even take time to change into their pj's.  Swimming will wear a person out.

Thank you Papaw and Mamaw for letting us swim and we had a great time.

So whether its snow or water, we will have a blast either way!!!