Valentine's Family Night

My friend, Becky, told me about a Valentine's Day tradition they have as a family. They pass out paper hearts, and every member of the family writes down something they like about another member of the family on one of the paper hearts. Then they hide the heart someplace where that family member will find it during the week. They each do one paper heart for each family member.

I decided to try it in our family this week. I was a bit skeptical about what the older boys would think, but it turned out to be very fun! One older boy did put up a little fuss at first, but everyone participated except Katie who went to bed early because she is sick. So we saved some hearts for her. I did preface the whole thing with a "reminder" to keep this to real compliments. Anyone who made someone else cry because of their "compliment" would have to do the other person's Saturday cleaning chore for them.

We spent the first part of the evening secretly writing on our paper hearts and then hiding them around the house. Rich and I helped the little ones. Then the little kids especially spent the rest of the evening trying to find all their hearts. We had chocolate chip cookies for a treat. Some of the compliments were: You are so awesome. You are thoughtful. You are a good cook. You are cool. You are so pretty. You are good at drawing. You are kind. I even noticed that big kids, who had homework and pretended not to care, did casually stroll from place to place to see who the different hearts were for. Everyone loves to hear something good about themselves.

The only downside was that the little kids got so excited by this that they had a hard time falling asleep last night!