A Heart Day

Some people make St. Valentine's Day into quite a production. We don't usually. The kids make cards for friends and sometimes family members. This year the girls made cookies as part of a math lesson and then handed them out to neighbors. But then we got a little treat of our own...
I am trying to do home school a little differently now, instead of just bookwork. I want my kids to love learning, not just have a list of work to cross off.

Since the oldest girl is studying Greece this week, we decided to find some Greek food! There is a Greek restaurant in town I love to go to, because they make the best lamb ever, and that's the only place I can get it. So I took the girls out to lunch. Now, I didn't realize when I made my lesson plans that it was a 'special' day. A day when many restaurants might be busy. Thankfully, we went at lunch time, and the place was basically all ours.
We ordered a couple of combination plates, and I told the girls we all had to try a bite of everything. And they did! They were so giggly and happy about being in a nice restaurant (no chicken nuggets in sight!!) Each of them liked the pita bread the most; one liked the humus, another ate the spinach pie with me (surprisingly good!!) the youngest kept asking for the tomatoes, and another girl really liked the lamb and chicken.
I was so proud of them for trying a bite of everything, even though they didn't really like them (like the olives - we all voted a no on those!)
It was a fun way to educate!

Later that evening, after a candlelight steak dinner, I gave the kids a little something special. For years, well, ever since each baby was born, I have been keeping a journal for each child. I don't write in it every day, just occasionally to record a special event, or something they said. Sometimes I just write in it to update what is going on in their life, or what they are learning. I thought I would give these books to each child at Christmas, but it didn't seem right. So then I thought maybe New Year's would be a good time to hand them out. That didn't work either. So I brought them out on Valentine's evening and let the kids read their own books, with the stipulation that they needed to return them when finished reading so I could keep adding to the pages.

The kids had so much fun reading about themselves as babies; or what they did to their siblings. They would stop every so often and say, "Listen to this!" It choked me up a bit. I haven't been so good about keeping the picture/ baby albums going - (that is a project for the day I get a craft area once the house remodeling is done!) but at least I am able to write little letters to them in their very own journals any time I need to.