Five for Friday

1. I just need to get it down that I draw deep satisfaction from taking care of my family. Preparing food to meet Chloe's needs and taste good to everyone else, finding solutions to physical challenges, coming up with a helpful idea. It warms me from the inside out.

2. I've driven Steven and his friends to the movies a couple of times in the last month and each time I think, 'I won't be doing this much longer.'   I've been driving the same core group of boys around for more than 10 years!

3. A woman at work, another hygienist, has gone on stress leave - she's been away for more than a month. I've had a few people say to me jokingly about this that they'd like to take a stress leave, which is funny. But actually this woman is the sole provider for her family right now, her husband hasn't worked in 3 years, and so this is very real. And not making money has to be a stress of its own, I'm sure.

4. Because of #3 I've been working more. Filling in the gaps can't exactly fall to the people who are already there every day - so I've been picking up extra hours. I've been told I'll be rich, but my response is I'll just own more scarves from Winners. (Actually, I dropped my car off today to have a remote car starter installed. I find working more has forced me to be a better meal planner, and slightly more organized, but I have also found it to be inconvenient. The remote starter, however, will be very convenient.) (Let it be noted I've moved from working 1 day/week to 2 days/week and it is only temporary - as in 6 weeks at the longest. My full time working friends have no sympathy, and I don't complain about it to them.)

5. The Valentine's wrap up:

I made advance plans for my Valentine's Day with Ken. Not all of them pulled through, but we did go out to eat on Tuesday during Steven's football off-season training, which made me much luckier than the wives of those coaches!

For some reason I was not as on top of Valentine's Day for the kids. I did our traditional waffles with strawberries and whip cream thing, but let's just say that the evening of February 13th was a flurry of activity to have Carmen and Chloe ready for the next day:

Carmen prepared her first box lunch social. Thank heavens she was on top of things: she made two personal-sized homemade lasagnas on Saturday and stuck them in the freezer. But on Monday night she still had to shop with me for the *extras* and she also made two personal sized pineapple upside-down cakes. Carmen's lunch was bought by 2 boys who pooled their money together: it went for $85! They split the food up between the 3 of them fine, but I guess we should include an extra drink in the future just in case.

Chloe's Valentine's friendship bracelets were all done, but the night of the 13th still required putting them together with the Valentine printable (a la Pinterest):

We also made pink Rice Crispie Treats with marshmallow hearts on top for a class treat. I'm sure we would have contributed to the class party food anyway, but the no gluten/no dairy thing makes it a requirement.

Happy Valentine's Day!

(Steven gleaned the benefits of having younger sisters by getting a pineapple upside down cake of his own as well as a couple of Rice Crispie treats, and all the extra marshmallow hearts.)

(Jaclyn says she had the best Valentine's Day ever.)