Valentine's Day 2026

We are down to one child who does Valentine's parties at school still. I honestly get so tired of going to look for cheap cards and candy to hand out. Well, last month for an activity day activity the girls made clay hearts and other shapes. After that activity, Alice said she wanted to make clay hearts for her class this year. I loved that idea! We kept thinking we were going to make them early and kept putting it off, until about 1 week before I had Curtis help Alice make one batch of clay. We were originally going to leave the clay white and then add in some food coloring when kneading so that it would create a marble effect. Well, my husband was just trying to follow the directions on the video (I was gone that evening to take Charlotte to basketball practice). They went ahead and added food coloring while it was in liquid form, trying to get a purple color. It actually turned out blue. We put it in the fridge to keep it until we were ready to roll it out (almost a week later). I bought some more baking soda so we could make another batch. This time Alice went for pink. So, we came out with blue and pink hearts. Blue for the boys and pink for the girls. I thought I had heart shaped cookie cutters, but I guess I don't and had to borrow some from Glenna.

Instead of decorating the hearts while it was still soft, we just left them as plain hearts. It was a lot of work to knead the dough back together and roll it out without it breaking, so I was happy just to get the hearts cut out. The next day after they had dried all the way, Charlotte, Alice and I took turns writing with a pen on each heart.

This is the design we did for each heart. Alice wrote this one. 

On the back we wrote who it was going to and the year and "from Alice".

Alice working on the hearts. We used the cookie can to carry them in. Unfortunately, two kids told Alice that theirs had broken. Kind of a bummer, but it was still fun to do something different.

Alice with her school Valentine's box. Charlotte gave her the dragon because Charlotte was given several 3D printed things for Valentine's from friends, so she didn't want her sister to feel disappointed if she didn't get any from friends at school (which she didn't).

On Valentine's Day, we started out with Charlotte and I going to her basketball game while the rest of the family helped clean the church. Early games on Saturdays (8am) are almost brutal for these kids. They are still so sleepy. This particular game for Charlotte's team was particularly difficult to watch. It was their worst game so far. Our team normally has 8 players and they were down 1 because of sickness. The other team had 11 girls! I don't understand how they could let that happen to have so many more players than our team. That meant less rest time for our girls. Our girls were just not making their shots, making poor passes, and not rebounding. They also started making more calls by the referees. I think they do that towards the end of the season. Anyway, it was hard to watch that game, but we got through it. And one of the teammates brought a treat bag for each player, so that was nice. Their last game is this Saturday and this time it will be at 9am, thankfully. I think all of their games were either 8am or 9am. It would have been nice to have a 10am at least once.

After we got home and Curtis with Alice and Garrett (Jack went to Fusion practice), we started planning out our family derby car for our ward derby car race that will be this coming Friday evening. It's a "no holds" race again, so basically anything goes as long as the car stays on the track. Last year we had some bungie cords flinging cars and that got a little scary. Nothing like that this year. We decided that our car will be Harry Potter themed with Charlotte's little Lego Buckbeak and Harry riding on top. Curtis also ordered a little power fan to attach on top. This is going to be a lot more fun this year! We're actually putting some planning into it. (To be fair, Curtis was really sick last year and not up to making a car)

In the afternoon, Alice went with a friend to a baptism, then to their house and then to her friend's basketball game, while the rest of us went to the temple to do baptisms as a family. I wasn't able to get in the water this time, but they let Charlotte do mine for me. We each had 5 names. I did the confirmations for my names. It was great to be there with the boys and Charlotte and Curtis. We did not get a picture because I left my phone in the van. Maybe next time. Originally, we were going to do the baptisms the Saturday before, but because we had so much going on with Jack's birthday and Curtis being out of town, we rescheduled it for Valentine's Day. I'm glad we did. Charlotte even saw her friend's family there after we finished our session. 

Curtis and I didn't really plan anything for Valentine's Day other than the temple. I went to go watch Alice's friend, Laila, play her basketball game (which was at 4:00pm). Then Alice came home with me, and we finally started talking about it. There is a new movie out in theaters that I really wanted to see called "Solo Mio" that stars Kevin James and Jonathan Roumie (the actor who plays Jesus on The Chosen). It was put out by Angel Studios. We had also been thinking about signing up for Angel Studios streaming service and we finally did. Curtis cancelled YouTube TV and signed up for Angel. The cool thing about the premium package they have is that you can get two free tickets to every show put out by Angel in theaters. So, that's exactly what we did. He signed us up and then we got our tickets to see "Solo Mio". 

We decided to eat somewhere that wouldn't be busy because we didn't want to be late to our movie. Curtis mentioned a sandwich shop called the Graze, so we went there and there wasn't anybody in line. My sandwich was called the "Jack", and it was really good. Costco was right across the street, so we drove over there afterwards to grab some ribs for our Sunday dinner the next day and to get one of their chocolate chip cookies at the food court. I had been craving one of those. I love that they serve them warm. We split the cookie in half, and we ate it on the way to the AMC theater. We both really enjoyed that movie and would definitely recommend. It's a good romantic comedy. So, while we didn't buy each other any chocolates, or flowers, or anything, it was still a good Valentine's Day. We don't need all that other stuff.