Be My Valentine

I was thinking last night about Valentines Day.

I remember when I was in elementary school we would plan a couple of week in advance to have a "room party". We would get an old shoe box, cereal box or other medium small box and decorate it with crepe paper and constructions paper hearts, flowers and other fancy things. We would each receive a list of the correct spelling of each person in our room, including teachers.

Then on the Day closest to Valentines, if it happened to fall on a week-end, or on Valentines Day itself~we would bring those boxes and the Valentines we had either made or bought and carefully written the names on~

There would be regular work in the morning and then after lunch and close to the end of the day we would clear our desks and place our Valentines Box in the middle of them. Then the room mother's would bring in cupcakes or cookies and punch. There would be games like "Thumbs Up~Heads up", "Pin The Tail On The Donkey" and others. Then we would have time to deliver our Valentines to each other.

In the evenings we would take around the Valentines we had for friends and neighbors.
The fun part about that was that we had to try to be very sneaky~You see we would sneak up to the front door, place our card on the door mat and either ring the door bell or knock~then you had to run like crazy so that you could be hidden before the door was opened.

I'm not sure why~as our names were on the cards...But it was great fun!! And we never went out at the same time as our neighbors~I wonder if the Mom's got together on that?

And since I'm not near as fast as I once was, I am delivering my Valentines cards to you this way...

Happy Valentines Day from Our House to Yours ~

May you know that you are Loved ~

Waking up the clothes line...

I have been longingly looking at my clothes line in the back yard all winter~

I have been thinking also that when I was little I remember gathering frozen clothes off the lines. They were so fun to get, because the ice would crack when you would fold them in half...then when they would thaw out mom or one of the older girls would iron them.

I could never really figure out why we would freeze dry the clothes in winter, but have to run out and gather them in during the summer if it started to rain?

I haven't hung anything out to be "freeze dried", but I did take out my first load of sheets yesterday!!!

Honey saw them out there and he remembers their clothes line as a child too~he said when he and his brothers got a little older and thought they needed pants dried faster than the line or "clothes horse" were capable of, they would use the oven to dry them~ He does recall a pair or two that got singed before he got the hang of it...

We LOVE the smell of clothes dried on the lines!

It's the smell of sunshine, breezes and childhood memories...

And yes, the cat's were right there helping me. I'm still not sure why cats don't think clothes can be properly hung without their help~but I like their company too...