2018 Butler's Family Valentine's Dinner

A big motivation behind our decision to homeschool is to strengthen and protect our family dynamic in order to set our kids up with the best tools for the future.  Whether we pursue it or not, our family unit will shape the future behaviors and relationship patterns of our kids.  One way we love to feed the family dynamic is holiday traditions!  

Valentine’s Day can be a tricky one because of how conditioned we have become to see it as a couple’s holiday.  Sure kids have school parties, but usually society either loves or hates it based on whether or not you have a date.  And while I love having a Valentine’s date with Mr. Butler, showing love and appreciation should never be limited to a couple. 

This was the year the kids thought I meant costumes when I said "Dress up" so we went with it!

 

Our first or second Valentine’s Day after my oldest was born, a traditional kid-free date night wasn’t going to happen so I decided to improvise.  Instead, we had a fancy dinner at home with nice dishes and our Sunday best.  As we added kids, we just continued the tradition and now it is one of the kids’ favorite nights!   Here are some shots from this year's dinner - complete with lasagna, fresh flowers and Knudson's Sparkling Cherry Juice!

Sometimes you do things out of necessity that later on turn into something so important.  This is one of those things for our family.  It takes extra effort (mostly on my part in regards to cooking and grocery shopping), but the impact this kind of thing has on the kids is huge.  Miss Z has been on a big kick of wanting us to be twins and when we both dressed in black she just about lost it with joy.  Plus, this was the first year we let them use the fancy glasses with Mr. Butler and I.  Fun all around, we talked about what we loved about each other and we worked on our table manners as well! A very good day!