My funny Valentine

Gone are the days of romance and roses. These are the days of cotton pajamas given a few days prior to "the big day" because, well, I just really needed them.

But I traded in all the cliches and sugary sweetness something far better. A life so full of love and precious moments that my heart can hardly contain it. Truly, when I look at the enormity with which I love every single little (and big) soul that live in my home I just want to burst.

So this is what a real day of love looks like in my house.... I woke up sweaty, sandwiched between two kids (Connor and Liam) and one hot hubby. What woke me up? Glad you asked... Connor singing some really crazy version of "the itsy bitsy spider" (possibly made up on the fly) wherein the spider actually gets squished. Lunch at a local sub shop. A made-up game of spider on the trampoline where I am the spider and I try to catch my "bugs". Tying strands of my hair around a tiny rubber alien's head so that he can appear to be flying. My first Valentine will be spending his afternoon in one of his many roles, as den leader, working to uphold his reputation as Pinewood Derby king. (He and Liam are going to carve Liam's first ever pinewood derby car... Jack's car has won first place the past two years.) Such is the life of parents of four... no time to stop and gaze into each other's eyes. But if I could stop to gaze into the eyes of the best husband on the planet, I would tell him how much more I love him now than I did when I married him (much to the credit of the fact that I have enough life experience to fully appreciate what I have.) I would tell him how happy he makes me and how safe I feel under his able guidance of our family. I would tell him how lucky I am to be married to a guy that I love hanging out with and how easy marriage is with him. I would also tell him how happy I am that I, by some unbelievable stroke of good fortune and uncharacteristic display of good judgment on my part, ended up married to him, the best dad and husband I know. And how blessed I am that he was crazy enough and enough of a gambler to marry me (a sometimes hippy, sometimes preppy, always on the move searching kind of a girl.) It was a perfect storm of events that only converge about once a millenia that would land someone like me in a marriage to a guy like him. But I'm glad I was in the eye of that storm. But, alas, there's no time for eye gazing and professing our love for one another, so he'll just have to read it in a blog post. I love you honey... thanks for reading the blog (now that I am e-mailing them to you.) You are truly the best thing that ever happened to me!

1 Corinthians 13:4-8, 13

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. -And now these three remain, faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love."