Valentine's prep - part 1

Today is a new day! The sun is shining, children have returned to school, and I am finally getting a little bit of motivation back! It always helps me to get rid of those things that are 'hanging over my head', which for me has been doing our business tax return, which I need to do early in order to have the info we need to file our personal tax return. NOT my idea of a good time...but a necessary evil. Anyway, I got up before 6 a.m. this morning in order to rid myself of this monkey, and was mostly done by about 9 a.m.! (And that includes getting the kids off to school in that same time frame, so I'm pretty pleased with myself! :)

As promised I wanted to start putting out some resources for anyone interested in some fun ideas for Valentine's Day. It is less than 2 weeks away, you know! So...in the spirit of not 'reinventing the wheel' today I'm just going to share some links to some OTHER people's great ideas.

If you're looking for some family relationship builders, you will definitely want to see all Jen's ideas over at Balancing Beauty and Bedlam. Here's the link to her post "Creative, Yet Cheap Valentine Ideas". I'm planning to hit up a few of those myself!

Then there's a seriously good post over at A Holy Experience, entitled "How to Fall in Love Again in 4 Minutes a Day". Reading the first part of the post nearly made me cry, because I could very much identify. The marriage building ideas she offers...all I can say is that it's really, really good stuff, and you should check it out. (*Warning, her blog does have autoplay music, so if you're clicking over there while sitting in a room with a napping baby, you'll want to mute your sound!)

Not a blog, but an entire website of great resources would be RealRelationships, the site of Drs. Les and Leslie Parrot. They are Christian husband-and-wife team who minister to couples through books, seminars, TV and radio shows and more. There's a plethora of information and resources over there. (You liked that word, 'plethora', didn't ya??) ;) Plus, there's nothing more loving than being willing to invest serious time and energy into learning and purposefully building your marriage. The resources found there will help you do just that.

If you are looking to plan a fun date night, you can check out The Discovery Game, or, if you want something more creative (and racy!!) you'll want to check out Simply Romantic Nights (put out by Dennis & Barbara Rainey and FamilyLife).

Of course, as I mentioned before, I can't say enough good things about Mark Gungor and his "Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage" stuff. I mean, c'mon....who doesn't love to laugh...and sometimes, when it comes to marriage, you've just GOT TO!!!

Speaking of Mark, here's one more fun clip for you. (I love this guy!)