Valentine's Day is always a bit bittersweet for me because it is the anniversary of when my mom died- 16 years ago this year. However, that also always leads me to want to celebrate a little more and enjoy a day focusing on love. Since we've been in Central Asia I've tried to do a little something for the women in my life to help them know I love them, and more importantly, that God loves them. Women don't hear that often here so I want to take chances to tell them whenever I can.
This year I thought it would be fun to make cards with Eliana to give to our friends. I saw a cute idea for doing handprint hearts. Now I'm not that crafty and Eliana isn't really an "activity" kid but I thought she'd be old enough to give it a good effort. Well, first of all I thought we could write a little note on the inside and she could color some with markers. She colored for maybe one minute total the whole time. All she could focus on was putting the lids back on the markers. I even tried letting her put stickers in them but then all she wanted to do was put the stickers on herself, me and her bunny.
After all this we did the handprint hearts. Let's just say they ended up looking more like Jesus' bleeding hands than a heart. It was still fitting though since I'd typed John 3:16 on the front! Anyway, it was a stressful activity (this is when she ended up naked in her boots) but our friends did like them and Eliana really enjoyed giving them out (she is an extrovert after all!) so I guess it was worth it in the end. I think we'll wait a few more months before trying more crafts!
Here is a sample of our work...
This year I thought it would be fun to make cards with Eliana to give to our friends. I saw a cute idea for doing handprint hearts. Now I'm not that crafty and Eliana isn't really an "activity" kid but I thought she'd be old enough to give it a good effort. Well, first of all I thought we could write a little note on the inside and she could color some with markers. She colored for maybe one minute total the whole time. All she could focus on was putting the lids back on the markers. I even tried letting her put stickers in them but then all she wanted to do was put the stickers on herself, me and her bunny.
After all this we did the handprint hearts. Let's just say they ended up looking more like Jesus' bleeding hands than a heart. It was still fitting though since I'd typed John 3:16 on the front! Anyway, it was a stressful activity (this is when she ended up naked in her boots) but our friends did like them and Eliana really enjoyed giving them out (she is an extrovert after all!) so I guess it was worth it in the end. I think we'll wait a few more months before trying more crafts!
Here is a sample of our work...
The front...I thought an outline of a heart would help them visualize what we were going for.
The inside...they all said Happy Valentine's Day and then I wrote "We love you" in most of them and for this one wrote "We are thankful for all of you" because it is for the girls who work at the grocery store next to us.
As for us, we celebrated lightly this year. The three of us went to a new pizza place in town and then Drew and I enjoyed watching "Fireproof" together and eating a mini-cheesecake sampler that I ordered from a Tajik lady who cooks and sells American food. They were awesome! Definitely worth buying them and not going through all the work to make them.
So yeah, overall we had a really nice day. I am thankful that we get to celebrate love for each other and have an opportunity to serve and show God's love on a day that could be really sad for me. God is sweet to have given us that blessing!
No comments:
Post a Comment