A Day to Hug Your Kids Tight

This photo is from a few months ago, but I love it because it's so hard to get all three kids smiling so happily and naturally.  It seemed like an appropriate photo for a post about being thankful for each one of them.

It seems like there's news about a terrible shooting about once a month these days, but today's shooting at a school in Connecticut is disturbing on a whole different level given that 20 very young children died.  Obviously that makes you think of your own kids and generally scares the heck out of you (I saw a few friends posting on Facebook about wanting to homeschool their kids).

So this afternoon when I went to pick the kids up from daycare I decided we were going to have an "I love my children" evening with movies, candy, and hot chocolate with little marshmallows.  I told them we were going to have a really special night and that I wanted them to know how much I loved them, but they were kind of missing the context since they don't know anything about the shooting (one of the benefits of not having a television) and I certainly didn't want to share.  They didn't notice me getting choked up when I was trying to talk to them about how much I love them.  Luckily they were much more concerned about what specific candy and treats would be involved.

We came home and they each got to pick a show to watch on the computer -- that's three whole television shows!  Tori made salmon for dinner and then we gave them hot chocolate with teensy marshmallows.

Unfortunately, I had a hard time staying focused on happy, loving thoughts because each one of them was being kind of a pain in the neck (sometimes spoiling your kids for one night actually leads to really annoying behavior, as it turns out).

Regardless, today is definitely a day to hug your kids tighter than normal, spoil them a little bit more, and just generally give thanks that they're safe and healthy.  I'm so, so sorry for the families that don't get to do that tonight.