Valentine's Day

Valentine's day in Brasil is actually in June. It's called Dia dos Namorados which means boyfriend/girlfriend day.

We decided this year to celebrate the American Valentine's day as a family.

My girlfriend and I usually have a date night on the American and Brasilian Valentine's days so the kids are used to that. In the past we've bought the kids some candy and done some special things for them but we've never had a fixed tradition with the kids on those days. This year Carys reminded us that we have as a family, in the past, made valentine's cards for each other. My girlfriend and I remember doing that maybe once or twice year but it's been a while ago. It's never been a fixed tradition. Leave it to Carys to remember something fun like that and wanting to repeat it.

So we repeated it again this year and it was fun.

As in many of our posts here we realize that it's mainly for our two girls that aren't in our house anymore. I apologize to the rest of you guys.

So B and Ans, here are some Valentine Day pics.

You know some people worked really hard at their cards.

Here are some of their creations:

We had Lightning McQueen.

 We had Office references.

 We, of course, had Nacho complete with attached poem.

 Garrett remembered Anderson's favorite American football player.

 We had awesome poems by a gifted writer.

Carys didn't forget my love for Gibby from ICarly. He's my favorite.

We had more of Carys' creativity.

She made a dog for Giovanni with a piece of red candy in it's mouth for a wagging tongue.

We had mom's creativity.

Then we had the creativity from Anderson's brain.

Star Wars for Giovanni.

 Special love note to Carys as only Anderson could verbalize.

He remembered the story of me and my girlfriend snorkeling when we were in Mexico a few years ago. In his version we were doing so with a big shark that also happened to have this shark bib on.

A personal note to mom to not work out so much for a couple of reasons: 1) some of her love might come out of her and 2) she is already skinny.

A personal note to Garrett in the shape of a giant T for Tennessee.

Some of our cards got sticky. Why? Because my girlfriend made Valentine's Day pancakes before we shared our cards. Heart shaped or hearts in the middle.....of course.

  
 
Other things also happened during the day. Day to day stuff. Like MD appointments or standing in a bank line for 30 minutes waiting to pay a bill.  Things definitely not picture worthy and not so fun.

But we got to end the day at our neighborhood pool which was awesome because it's been in the mid 90's and our house has no air conditioning so we enjoyed cooling off.

All in all we had a great time inventing our Valentine's Day celebration.

It was a great, fun filled family day and at the end of it we were all a little bit tired.

Some more than others.

I would say, if it's up to the kids, this will be a new family tradition. We like inventing those. You know it was good when even a 15 year old boy enjoyed making and getting cards.

If you want to check out what Valentine's Day was like for Ansley in Ecuador. Just click here.