Happy Valentine's Day

We had a great Valentine's "season" with lots of different occasions to celebrate. Bone Voce had their annual dinner/program and we went to it on Valentine's day since we had basketball games the other night they did the program. It was a very nice dinner and program as usual. Bone Voce did a jazz program with lots of nice old songs. Cory had a solo on "Stormy Weather" and it reminded me of when TJ sang a solo on that song when he was in Bone Voce. They also sang "I'll Be Seeing You," which is one of my favorites and I remember Abby doing that one only she played the piano . They also sang several songs that Jamie and Derek had done. Some of them were; "Nice Work If You Can Get It" "It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing" "In the Wee Small Hours" . We enjoyed the evening with both Grandparents and Do and Lisa at our table. Cory and Alex were our servers.Earlier that week we made our Valentine cookies to take to our friends and neighbors. I did a scrapbook page of last years decorating party showing how enthused Marcus and Cory looked while they were decorating. So when I told the kids to look a little more like they were enjoying it, this is what I got!
But we did end up with some gorgeous cookies and smiling faces!
We celebrated Valentine's on Friday the 15th with Marcus and Jamie coming home to join us. It was SO much fun with them here. Man they really did liven up the party and we had a blast all night long with lots of laughs. We had a yummy dinner of fish (salmon or halibut) veggies, potatoes, jello and salad and ate on our china.
After dinner we played everyone's favorite - bingo (ha ha) while Jay set up the "string thing." We decided we need to have a name for the string activity. Cory and Marcus mentioned that people are really confused when they try to tell them about our Valentine traditions and wondered what the string thing had to do with Valentine's Day. In case you are wondering where it came from, Furb lent Jay and I a tape he had on parenting to listen to, and the person giving the talk on the tape told about his family doing it. We thought it sounded fun and changing it slightly to fit our house and family started that tradition. It is a lot of fun to do and we can't celebrate without it.
This year Jay did an especially stellar job of stringing the yarn and we had a lot of fun and laughs getting through it all. We even had to crawl on the ground! I of course was at the end trying to take pictures and got some pretty good ones, but the weirdest one of all was in the hall. For some reason the flash reflected off the yarn and made this strange glow so that it looks like a lazer beam or something shooting across the hall. Cool huh?
Finally everyone received their Valentine treats.
Exchanging Valentines! We were excited to be able to add Abby's valentines to our boxes since there isn't too many of us still at home. Abby also made me some very cute blocks that have LOVE in them. I really wanted some and tried to find some to buy but couldn't find any anywhere. They fit in great with all our new Valentine decorations Jay got for his birthday.
I even made a valentine rag quilt to put in the trunk in the entry. Can't believe I got it done!