14 Days of Valentines

 I found on Pinterest a cute idea to do 14 gifts until Valentine's day (don't you love all the amazing ideas on Pinterest? I am obsessed). All the gifts were planned out and they even had little tags all made up and ready go.  They were so cute. I just had to find someone to give it to. Then I thought of my niece Veronika. She is 13 years old and the perfect age for a cute gift like 14 days of Valentines. If I was 13, I would have absolutely died to get something like this! 

So it was decided, Olive and I would be Veronika's secret Valentine. It was so much fun for us to deliver these gifts. Every day Olive would remind me "We need to take Veronika her present!" We would usually drop it off as we walked past her house on the way to preschool. Or sometimes we would just take a special walk to leave her a present. Olive liked helping me pick out what to give her. She was rather jealous of some of the gifts, like the Valentines balloons and the cupcakes.

 Olive would say "We be sneaky sneaky!!" as we would walk up and deliver her presents.

 

It was really nice for us to do something together and helped us think about how wonderful Veronika is. I was sure that Olive would tell her but I think we made it without a slip. We knew her schedule pretty well, and it helps that she is in school all day. We did get caught by her mom a couple of times, but what can you do? I think Veronika might suspect that it is us, but at least we didn't spill the beans!

 One of my favorite gifts was "10 thing we love about you". We spent and FHE getting all the presents ready and then filled out some of our favorite things about Veronika. We put in way more that 10 things because we just kept thinking of great things about her. Some of our list was:
-her creativity: she is always sewing and crocheting and crafting. She got yarn for her birthday and was jumping up and down with excitement.
-her resilience: This girl has been through so much and has always held her head up. She just starts everyday with determination and doesn't let things bog her down. I am continually surprised at how resilient she is!
-her determination
-her ability to solve any problem and usually with very ingenious solutions. This girl thinks outside of the box and is really creative at solving problems.
-her willingness to put others first. She would give you the clothes off of her back if she thought you needed them. She always wants to make sure that others are taken care of.
-her compassion
-her testimony!
-how service minded she is
As I sit hear and re-list all of the things we came up with, tears fill my eyes like they did before when I think of what a strong,  capable, and thoughtful young women she is and is becoming. Olive loves Veronika. Veronika is always willing to play with her AND will play whatever Olive wants. We are so lucky to have such an amazing girl and example in our lives. I love thinking that Olive gets to grow up with so much family around, but it especially touches me that she gets such amazing people to look up too.

It was seriously such a great experience that we decided that we are going to find someone every year to do 14 days of Valentines for! Tomorrow is the big day and I have a big surprise waiting. We are going to heart attack her room while she is at school. I will have to post pictures of her heart attack because I went a bit crazy. It is going to be a huge, but happy, mess. I don't even know how many hearts I cut out and then punched out with the scraps. Yeah, it's going to be intense!