We had our traditional family Valentine’s Day party Tuesday night. Making 6 heart-shaped pizzas and one regular is quite a production. I had the little boys use round cake pans for theirs.

For dinner we had pizza, salad, and lemonade. After dinner we cleaned up and then had to wait for the swarms of flying termites to die down before we could turn the lights back on to continue the party. We had a 20-minute afternoon rain, unusual for this time of year, and it stirred up the termites for swarm mating. In the morning I made heart-cut-out-cookies with the little boys and we decorated them after dinner for dessert.

After we finished, eating the 4 older kids read an original story they have been working on. It was composed of 4 pages – each folded in half. Each kid wrote one side of each page for a 16-page story – the pattern was Isaiah, Clara, Anna, and then Becca. Quite an interesting progression of events during each “page.” After that we exchanged cards, and then Josh continued our tradition of his reading a book about St Valentine.

Josh bough roses for me from Ban Lung and had them delivered by taxi van. He bought each of the girls a pink rose and chocolate bars for the boys.