This is largely Mother’s tradition. Every year it changes slightly. Like for instance one year Mother downloaded a bunch of songs (fifty-six to be exact) and made twenty-eight different CD’s they were songs like: “This Kiss” by Faith Hill and “If I could make just one wish” (probably by faith hill too, I don’t remember) each CD had two or three songs. She would put the CD in Daddio’s car so when he turned on the car it would start playing. And then she would leave a present pertaining to the songs on his seat. So she left him a bunch of Hershey kisses. Or she had one CD with Elvis’s “I just want to be your teddy bear” song and she gave him kissing teddy bears. Get the idea? One year she wrote a poem for every day of the month and gave him presents and had them delivered to work. Another year she just had things sent to him in the mail (man did people at work get jealous of the type of mail he received that year.) Dad says that people at work anticipate this every year, and wait to see what creative things Mom gives him.
Although this tradition didn’t include the entire family directly, we kids were often in on the secrets and were as excited to see Daddio’s response as Mom was. When she got stumped on ideas we were there to lend a hand. The year she did the CD’s Rosalie helped the most, because Mom just isn’t as hip as Rosalie was, well and neither am I, so she had to lend some advice as to what songs were out there. I think watching Mom serve Daddio has taught us how important it is to serve, especially in a relationship.
Often Valentines Day is a day when the boyfriend or husband is expected to do something really nice for the woman. I don’t know how that came to be, but Mom has taught us that it is just as important for the wife to spoil the husband rotten as it is for him to treat her like a queen. We have gained a knowledge and experience of celebrating a holiday in a whole other manner than anyone else. THIS IS FUN. It has also taught us that Valentines isn’t the only day of the year that you can express your love, it is just a good excuse to show your love excessively for an entire month, it is not an obligation but an exciting chance.
Mom says there are two reasons she does this tradition. Reason number one is when the scriptures mention love it is followed by an action. So Mom’s philosophy is that if you love someone you need to not only express it in words, but in actions. You need to make a point of doing something about your love. Reason number two is the philosophy of “if you don’t feel it, fake it.” Although, these silly games won’t save a marriage they will keep a marriage from getting worse. She says the more she plays these games the more in love with Daddio she becomes. Serving someone makes you like them more. And she has to think about him every time she makes a new valentine. All year long everything she sees she asks herself, “How could I use this to tell my Husband that I love him!?!” When you go through the entire year thinking this way it is very difficult not to love who ever you are thinking about. Every song that comes on the radio, she thinks about how wonderful Daddio is and how she could use this song to tell him that she loves him. All year, she is making notes of things that make her remember that she loves Daddio. What a wonderful thing!
Not only has Mom taught us a lot in her actions. But as we have gotten older and started getting boyfriends, or girlfriends, or even spouses (gasp) she has lent a hand in helping us get the hang of it. She has let us borrow old ideas or helped generate new ones so that we too can join in her fun and spoil our significant others rotten as well! Mom has generated an entire box, and kept every idea she has ever used. I take it back we have two huge boxes in our basement of simple ways of telling someone, “I love you.” This has been such a grand tradition with Mom and Daddio; I can’t imagine it not continuing. I think that most of us kids have learned how much fun it can be to pamper one we love, and look forward to being able to do so for a very long time.
Daddio says that, “I think your mom is very cute.”
Mom hasn’t only shown her love to Daddio on Valentines Day I am sure we all remember the time when she made each of us shirts out of dollar bills. And the time she gave us HUGE Hershey kisses.
Another tradition associated with Valentines, and once again shows Mom’s tendency to go over board, is Mom’s love for Valentine cookies. She makes tons of them! Every kind you can think of -- Hundreds of cookies. This is ok in our house because everyone knows of our other tradition of “Spontaneous Cookie Combustion.” It doesn’t really matter what kind of cookie it is: with in an hour of it being cooked, bought, or opened every last cookie is gone. Cookies just don’t last in our house, especially Oreos. In fact, we eat so many Oreos in our house that one day Mom had “The Official Oreo Taste Test Event.” We all closed our eyes and had a stack of cookies in front of us, it contained: American Oreos, Canadian Oreos, and a whole bunch of cheap imitation Oreos. We got to taste everyone with a swig of milk in between and then had to determine which one tasted the best. Mom’s hope was that we would choose one of the cheaper brands so that she didn’t have to spend so much on cookies. But we didn’t. ALL of us had eaten so many Oreos in our life that we could quickly choose the right cookie. Not only could we choose an Oreo out of a stack of fake Oreos but we could tell the difference between “America’s favorite cookie” and “Canada’s favorite cookie!”
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