Family

This Valentine’s Day Make sure you tell the ones you love that you LOVE them

By Rhonda Leon

Valentine’s Day is coming up and although it is historically a day set apart to celebrate the courtship of lovers, why not take hijack the day and use it as an opportunity to let those you love most, know that you love them.  After all:

Love makes the world go ’round!  Love is all we need!  Love is the answer!  What the world needs now is LOVE!  Children in elementary schools celebrate Valentine’s Day, so why can’t everyone.  The kids aren’t courting, so why should we have to be?  The stores are full of easy to grab (if you have the cash) tokens of love for you to purchase and then give to your loved one or ones, but the sweetest Valentines are the ones made with love.  If you like to bake, and even if you don’t, if you have children, you can cut out heart-shaped cookies and have fun decorating them.  You don’t even need to buy a cookie cutter because the heart is such a simple shape, you can cut the hearts out using a butter knife.  Kids can get creative and make skinny hearts, robust hearts, hearts with holes in them.  I think you get the picture.

You know what I love about Valentine’s Day?  (And I bet it’s even more fun when you’re the one who gets to ring the bell and run.)  Over the years, on more than one occasion, I and my children have been “Heart Attacked.”  It’s so fun!  Someone rings your doorbell and when you go to answer it, there’s no one there, but instead, there are paper hearts stuck all over your front door and scattered over your lawn.  The hearts have hand written messages on them, like those on candy hearts, only you can fit more words on a paper heart than they can on those itty-bitty sugary ones.   Last year, my 13 year old daughter was “Heart Attacked”  by some of her friends from church and we left our favorites of those hearts up on our door for over a month!  It’s nice to be reminded that you are loved.  I was just going through a box of my older daughter’s keepsakes last week and I found an old paper Valentine that she had saved from elementary school.  But we’re not just talking kids here.  What about Grandma and Grandpa?  Or maybe the lonely man who lives across the street.  The world needs love.  We all need love!  There are so many different ways that we can show our love for one another and sadly, it is often those who are closest to us whom we overlook; so let this article be a reminder for you:  Don’t forget to let your loved ones know that you love them this Valentine’s Day.