Ahhh, February, the month of love.  So much to celebrate, so much love to share, so much fun to be had!
In addition to the celebration of Valentine’s Day, February is also American Heart Month.  This is the month set aside by the National Heart Association as the month to focus on your cardio-vascular health. 

And of course, Valentine’s Day is celebrated on the 14th of the month.  I really recommend that you do not limit your Valentine’s celebration to a single day.  This is an opportunity to tell those around you that you love them.  What an opportunity to share joy for a whole entire month.  Here are some suggestions.

First of all, decorate your table.  Get a red or white tablecloth.  (At my house, we prefer vinyl tablecloths; they are so much easier to keep clean when you have small children.)  Add candles to the table and really light them.  Get out your nice china, and plan to use it often during the month.   Have your children help you cut out hearts of all sizes, spread these around the table.  Once a week, assign someone in the family to cut out one heart for each member of the family and have them write a note to tell each member in the family what the writer loves about them.  Have the assigned writer place these next to each person’s place-setting and take turns reading the notes during dinner.

Focus on foods this month that are red, pink and white.  February 20th is National Cherry Pie Day, isn’t that convenient?  You could serve Strawberry Yogurt, Strawberry smoothies, fresh berries with a little whip cream.  Think about you loving your heart and serve lots of fresh tomatoes, radishes, and red peppers. 
Make your children's’ favorite sandwiches and then get out your heart shaped cookie cutter.  Use the cookie cutter to cut out heart shaped sandwiches to send in their lunches.  You can also do this with brownies, or even French Toast.  Put heart shaped notes in their lunch boxes and their back-packs.  Let them know how much you really do love them.

Call a local nursing home or hospital and ask them if your children could make extra Valentine’s Day cards for patients and/or residents and have your children take the cards to be delivered.  Kids will have a great time with this, get out the crayons and the markers let them make the cards, or at least decorate the envelopes of Valentine’s cards that you buy from the store.

Work with your school or your church to sponsor a Valentine’s Family Dance.  Make it an event for the whole family.  Do the hokey-pokey, and the chicken dance, plan to polka or line dance, whatever suits your style.  Just get up and move and spend time laughing with those you love!

And while you’re busy celebrating the joy of love in your lives, here is a great suggestion on how to celebrate the joy of the many blessings in your life.  The pastor of our church just inspired me this past week by suggesting that we take stock with our families about the many blessings we have in our lives.  He suggested that we get a pad of sticky notes and write down blessings on those note pads every time we thought of them.  He then advised us to put the sticky notes on the bathroom mirror.  Then any time we are in front of that mirror there will be all of the blessings of our lives right in front of our faces.  You could involve the whole family, perhaps writing down your blessings at dinner each evening and posting new blessings on the refrigerator!  Just think of walking into your kitchen and seeing all of your many blessings right there in front of you.  Isn’t this a great suggestion?