My Thoughs on Valentines Day, and Our Party

Happy Valentine's Day to all from the Gilbarte family!

 

"Your love, Lord, reaches to the heavens,
your faithfulness to the skies. Your righteousness is like the highest mountains,
your justice like the great deep."

Pslams 36:5

 

Valentine's Day is about love, right?

When I think about Valentines day, I think of well, valentines. 

Candy, hearts, cute cards with sweet messages.

But do any of you know who St. Valentine was?

Yeah, I was a little rusty too, so I decided to do a little research.  

I know I'm about to sound like a history book for a minute, but bear with me, because this guys story is amazing.

St. Valentine was a Christan man who lived when the emperor believed people shouldn't get married.  In his eyes, his strong soldiers would be too distracted with wives and children that they wouldn't do well in the army.

Valentine, though, (yes, that really was his name!) believed other wise and refused to stop preforming marriage ceremonies.

Well, he was caught and thrown in jail. 

While there he met the jail keepers blind daughter who brought food for the prisoners.

Over time they grew to be friends and Valentine prayed for the girl, and asked God to heal her eyes.

God answered his prayer, and the jail keepers daughter was able to see.

Valentine, however was eventually killed.

 

His story is really amazing to me.

He lived boldly.  He knew the emperor was wrong, and was willing to die rather than pretend not to believe what he did.

Even when he was thrown in jail, probably realizing his days were numbered, he didn't give up.

He made a friend in a girl others thought was worthless. 

He prayed for and over her, and she was healed.

Because of this her father became a Christian and she probably did as well.

Valentine was killed, but not in vain.  He saved people from dieing eternally. 

 He was a wonderful example.

 

For our little party celebrating a day that honors this man, we started out with a heart themed breakfast.

 

this was followed by baking and decorating a batch of yummy sugar cookies, which involved a little nibbling and finger licking:)

 

I love decorating cookies. 

 It makes me get out my creative side, which hasn't really shown its self in a while.

But when I am doing it, I take forever. 

After a while the boys kinda lost interest.  They did about a cookie or two each and them decided to move on to finger painting.  That was fine with me! 

I enjoyed finishing decorating theirs and kept working at the rest of mine for a couple hours.

I like them.

 

Yeah, so after that the boys made a couple Valentines, and soon nap time was upon us.

I finished up my cookies and then make couple Valentines myself.

By then my creativity was drying up, so I decided to finish the rest of the valentines later and made some Valentine's Pretzel Snaps.  They turned out well.

 

This morning my Dad surprised us each with a Valentine card, even Kaden got one.

I love that about my Dad.  He's always so considerate.

So that sums up our day.

How'd yours go?