Family Valentine

For the first 10 years of Ben's and my marriage, Valentine's Day was quite a sticky day. Both of us had different ideas of how it should be recognized. I thought homemade candle-lit dinners and whispered sweet nuthin's. Ben thought "hallmark holiday I'm not celebrating". To be fair, I do agree with Ben that we should spend more effort loving everyone, all year. In honoring the day, though, we tried something different this year and think that it might be a new Rhodes tradition. We celebrated Valentine's Day (actually the day before) preparing Buckets of Hope to be sent to Haiti. Haiti has been been heavy on my heart lately (I'm sure I'll be writing more on that later) and this seemed like something we could do to "love on" the Haitian people and learn (or learn again) how to love those in need.

Our day started by talking to the kids about what we were going to do and why. Filling buckets with food for people that don't have enough food in Haiti because we love them. Ben and I had already talked to Madelyn a little about the earthquake in Haiti. Although I'm sure Madelyn doesn't understand the magnitude of what Haiti is like right now, she is understanding it a little bit - enough that she is praying for the Haitian people at every prayer time now (that in itself makes me tear up a little). Greyson is more oblivious to the details but knows that we are filling the buckets to help other people and that he gets to be the "strong boy" while putting all the stuff in the shopping cart and filling the buckets. That's enough for now. :)

Putting the buckets together is SO simple! We hit Walmart first for the buckets and contents (except the peanut butter, which I already picked up at Sam's). We found everything but the 2-gallon ziploks, the black beans, and they didn't have enough rice to fill our buckets. So we headed over to Cub to round out the shopping list. (FYI - the rice was TWICE the cost at Cub! WOW!) Madelyn and Greyson were excited to help and really got into it. When we got everything home, we spread it all out and filled them up very quickly. Since our church is collecting these buckets, we prayed over them as a family and took them to church on Sunday (Valentine's Day). And our tradition of loving others on Valentine's Day has begun.... We love you, Haiti, and pray for your recovery as a people and a nation.