Valentine's Day [by Matt]

A month or so ago, when Andrea was reconciling our credit card statement in Quicken on our computer, she commented that out of all of the payments on the account, to which we both have a card, only 4 were on my card and 2 of those were automatic payments and the other two were for gas at the gas station. We joked that she needed to let me out of the house more often!

I got my chance this past Saturday when I had to run out to the store to pick up a prescription. I decided that was my chance to get something for Andrea for Valentine's Day. In general, we don't go out of our way to do "extra" things for days like this as we both believe that it is far better to live a life day by day that demonstrates our love for each other than to once a year do something "extra". However, since I was out so close to Valentine's day, I did get her some chocolate that she likes and gave it to her this morning at breakfast.

Then this evening at supper Leah passed out all of the valentines that she had hand made for each of the members of our family. I was touched by how creative she was and how she made each one so specifically for the person she gave it to. Below are just a few images of them.

Here is the one for Mira just telling her how much Leah loves her.

This is the one for Bogomila, written in Bulgarian.

On Krassi's wrist is a Valentine's bracelet for our guy who loves to wear bracelets

As you can tell, he thought it was pretty neat.

While these are "extra" things that Leah made specifically because it was Valentine's day, it reminded me of what life around our house is like. There are plenty of things about the general size of our household and the decisions that we made as a family to make room for Mom and for Krassi and Tsvetomira and Bogomila to be a part of our family that can bring about daily challenges. However, it also gives us many opportunities to love, day in and day out. Much like Leah's valentine's day cards, what it looks like to love each person in our household looks very different and is specific to each person.