Love is in the Air

Ahhhhh, Brotherly-Sisterly Love! We have a little routine going on every evening. After scripture reading and prayers we have everyone give each other a kiss and say I love you! As you can imagine 4 siblings kissing each other goodnight can be quite the chaos. Especially since the boys obviously aren't into giving kisses to each other. They just have to hug now.

However, they are totally into stealing kisses from the girls. Stealing is totally the appropriate word because our girls will shriek and run away as soon as they see their intentions. It is totally a game of chase!
When one of the girls gets caught do you think she will finally relent???
Yeah, I don't think so!
Rose is the smart one, while Darin is busy chasing Ginger, Rose decides to hop a ride. It is seriously so cute! They boys chase the girls, they girls get caught, finally they will give them a kiss say, "I love you! GO TO BED!" No joke, they love to order them to bed after they fulfilled their sisterly duties.
A few weeks ago we pulled out Valentine's Mailboxes. We started sending love letters to each other last year and it is a fun tradition.
We spent the evening writing notes to everyone and gluing candy on them. This year the girls were pretty good about saying exactly what they felt about everyone. Rose wanted me to write all about how she loved to play games with Nathan, but only when he shared his DS with her.
Ahhhh, my Nathan. This guy just melts my heart. He only told me like 15 times that he was doing a double page love note for me. All for ME! I'll post it later from when I opened it.
It totally figures that the day we did this for Valentines Ken was out of town, just like last year. Thank goodness instead of a two week trip to Italy, he was only gone for 3 days to San Diego. For someone who wasn't even there to write us love notes, he sure did get plenty of his own. Rose and Ginger even wrote him one even though they were making all the rest of us promise to write them one before they would deliver our mail.
Here's all of our mailboxes, it's been a nice couple of weeks.
Here's some pictures of the kiddos enjoying their letters.


Not to brag or anything but I'm a Rock Star Mom! Ahh, I'm just kidding. I'm totally going to brag:-) Here's the letter Nathan wrote me, my big two pager.

Dear Mom,
You are a rock star mom and I love you very much and I love that you work very hard to support and strengthen me. I love that you do things that will help me phisically and mentally. I love you! I love that you play with me, and cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I love that you give me privilages and help me grow. I also love that you try to lighten my load and give me time to play. I love that do shopping and pay for my school, and for my phone, and for the house that I live in. I love that you sometimes buy me toys and that you pay for my lunch at school. I love that you are open to ideas and that you are a wonderful mother.
Love, Nathan

So if you made it to the bottom of this post, I figure I will throw in a little lovey-dovey dinner recipe.

Ken's favorite dinner is Chicken Cordon Bleu, I surprised Ken with it the first time we were in college and dating. It was crazy, my roommates were helping me find all sorts of crazy things to pound out that chicken. We used glass jars, baking sheets, frying pans, etc.

Anyway, the way I figure it is... You know you're in L-O-V-E when after 13 years of being together you still get so giddy and excited to surprise your man with a special dinner. Especially when I have probably surprised him with it like a thousand times:-)

Here's the way to your man's heart:
Assemble all the parts you'll need. Melt a stick of butter. Crush two cups of Cheez-Its and mix with equal parts of bread crumbs. Cut chunks of swiss cheese in to 1"x1"x2" rectangles (Ken loves a cheese that is called Smoky Swiss Cheddar, it melts beautifully and tastes great, spendy but totally worth it). Wrap the cheese in 2-4 slices of ham. Wash and clean the chicken, I actually only use half of a chicken breast. Here they are all together:
Now I have a much better kitchen utensils to use. It only takes like 30 seconds to pound out the chicken breast. You could go the route that cookbooks reccommend of placing the chicken between two sheets of plastic wrap. The thing is that I can never cut plastic wrap without wanting to throw the box across the room. Instead I use plastic grocery store bags, just slip the chicken inside and pound away. I like to turn on my current favorite love song; Grenade by Bruno Mars. I find it totally fitting and hilarious!
Put your ham roll in the middle of the chicken, match up the long sides and it will work out perfectly.
Roll it up into a nice little package about the size of a pack of cards. Well, double the thickness, but that's about the size.
Dip those babies into the butter bath and roll in the crumbs. Bake in the oven at 350 degrees for about 30-40 minutes.
Oh, Baby it is soooooo good! I serve mine with a garlic mushroom cheese sauce and noodles. It's really not that difficult, make it for your loved one, and enjoy the results!