In the spirit of Valentine’s Day this past weekend, I will share a combination of things I’ve been loving lately and some recent miracles. When I reflect on these blessings, gifts, and miracles I feel God’s hand in my life and His love for me.

I have been wanting to have have a Galentine’s Day party for years and a Jane Austen board/card game party. I combined the two desires and finally made it happen! I had a Jane Austen-themed Galentine’s Party the week before Valentine’s Day. It was so much fun!!!!! Details coming soon on how to do it. I had five guests, including my married daughter. She came, toting her baby boy, even though she had spent the day moving. So we had 5 adults, including me, one mature 11-year-old young woman, and a 5-month-old baby. My married daughter lent me the decorations shown in the top photo above. We played the Pride and Prejudice board game and Marrying Mr. Darcy. We didn’t get to the Jane Game, which we will do another time. It’s a truth universally acknowledged that we have so many games and so little time.

OK, here’s the mini-miracle involved. I was stressing about what to wear for the party. I invited everyone to dress up with corsets optional. I don’t own any light-colored high waisted empire dresses. I do have a maroon one from the wedding of one of my sons with long sleeves. It just seemed not Regency Era-looking enough. I texted my married daughter and asked her if she had some kind of fabric I could use as a sash to tie under my breasts to make a high waist out of a lace dress that I have. She texted back the picture of a perfect dress she owns asking if I wanted to wear it. She can’t wear it right now because of her nursing mother’s larger bustline. It was perfect for me! See below! I love the embroidery on the yoke. Can you believe that she found it at the Provo Deseret Industries for only $6? It’s so beautiful! I had to hear a white shirt underneath because it was too low-cut for me and I had a small rose necklace that was perfect to go with it.

2. I have been wanting to do a couples Valentine’s Day party with my Veggie Gal girlfriends for years, in person. We as girlfriends get together 3-6 times a year for a potluck lunch, never with husbands. I wanted to have a dinner date night with husbands or a friend (two of them are single). We did a zoom Valentine night a few years ago, not in person, so I wanted an in person one. Well I finally got my wish! One of my Veggie Gals saw that I put out a Valentine’s Day party invitation in our group chat with the location on the invitation as “TBD.” So she texted me back right away and asked if I was ok with her hosting. Yes, yes, yes! She has a large lovely home so of course I was thrilled. (I live in a small home with a table that seats only 8.)

We had the party on Valentine’s Day night. It was so completely delightful! 10 couples, meaning 20 people, attended. The host, Becky, had three tables with place settings for 20 people, actually 22 because one couple canceled at the last minute. She was liberal with the chocolate, putting tons in the center of each table. She even had some keto chocolate. It was all so marvelous!

It was a potluck dinner and games for whoever wanted to participate. Many chose to keep talking when we started the games, which I was totally OK with. Hostess Becky also fixed this super yummy keto chicken and my sister-in-law/fellow VG brought steak bites. I brought beef and bacon soup. It was all so delicious!

We also had a family Valentine party on Friday the 13th. We had pizza, veggies, root beer and cookies, and then played Valentine pictionary with the grandboys. Then they played with their uncle downstairs while the two couples (my husband and I, my married daughter and son-in-law) played the game Let’s Get Deep. Fun! It’s basically the Newlywed Game. I always love conversing with my daughter and son-in-law. They are such great conversationalists. We kept the questions PG rated. I found this game thrifting for around $3. So worth it!

All three of these events fulfilled my desire for wholesome recreation, which is a necessary ingredient for a happy, Christlike life. It’s always so good to get with friends and visit and play games. Ah, the simple life!

3. I have had a personal trial going on for a few months. It’s been soooo hard to bear, causing many tears and heartache. I came to a breaking point, thinking, “I need help with this problem or I am going to run away!” So I reached out and asked for help. Things are gradually improving. Part of the help was getting a priesthood blessing from my bishop, the leader of my church congregation. In the blessing, I was told that angels surround me and accompany me in my daily business. That felt very good to hear. Another thing I was told was the importance of me exercising patience for things to change.

4. My Favorite Things lately:

-winter and Valentine picture books and my pom-pom and Valentine garlands, decorating my front room, which also doubles as my dining room/library.

-my Hartigo Greek yogurt strainer, which I use almost every day to make my own Greek yogurt, according to my recipe here.

-Jane Austen fan fiction. I read the book above in January and loved it. Now I’m listening to the audiobook below. So much Jane fan-fiction exists I could always be reading one for the rest of my life. It’s just hard though to find the gems among the losers.

-the Our Thrifty Homeschool YouTube Channel, just to hear about the thrifting hauls of the homeshool mom on the channel, Toni. I haven’t been thrifting since January 3, and I’ve actually donated stuff to the thrift store, so I’m living the thrifting life vicariously.

-which leads me to one of my favorite victories lately: I got our office/game room cleared out. I forgot to take a “before” photo, but this is the “after” below: (just imagine board games piled high in stacks of ten or more on top of that table). Now to finish getting the matching Ikea fabric bins to replace the ugly cardboard boxes on the shelves. Those bins hold the smaller games, for younger children. I got the matching black shelves last summer. It’s taken me this long to finally organize the room and decide what games to give away since they don’t all fit. I also want to switch out the dresser in the lower right with more black shelves, and switch out the table for a black table.

-the book Tranquility by Tuesday, a book by Laura Vanderkam. After hearing the summary in the video below with Laura and Sarah Mackenzie, I got the audiobook in Libby and listened to it. It’s soooo good! The best time management book for mothers! I want to listen to it again! It has so many gold nuggets of truth! I’m still working on the guideline from the book that “Going to bed early is like sleeping in for adults.” Some habits are hard to break! My favorite guideline in the book is to take one night off a week for yourself. The second favorite guideline is to have one “big adventure” (a fun activity that takes over one hour) and one “little adventure” (a fun activity that takes less than an hour) to look forward to with your family every week.

-the You and Me and 23 YouTube channel about a family with 23 children! I used to fantasize about having 24 children when I was in the 4th grade. I ended up with 7 which is is wonderful, and now I get to live the life, in the remote way that the Internet allows, of a much bigger family, by watching this YouTube Channel. The husband and wife of the family, Colby and Autumn, just announced their 24th child! Amazing!

-the Our Life Homeschooling Channel. I just love hearing the soothing voice of host, homeschooling mom of ten, Sheri. So much of what she says resonates with the way I homeschool. It just makes me feel happy even though I’m not in the thick of homeschooling lots of children any more.

-the Homeschool Made Simple podcast found here. It also resonates with me so much!

-Marcie Holladay and her Single Mom on Farm YouTube Channel. She lives on a 36 acre farm in Virginia, homeschooling the five youngest of her ten children. It’s been interesting to watch her weather, LOL, pun intended, two storms that left her with two weeks of snow and ice while Utah is having such incredibly balmy weather.

-homeopathy! I’ve used it in the past month to heal me of my plantar fasciitis and my son’s congestion, fever, headache, and sore throat. I continue to feel empowered knowing I’ve saved our family lots of time and money visiting the doctor. See all my homeopathy healing stories and tips here. It’s every crunchy mom’s dream healing modality! It’s so inexpensive, powerful, and no side effects!

–Morning Basket time. It just makes so happy to have this time to share good, beautiful, and true things with my son as part of our homeschooling day. One of the books we have been reading from is this book below. I feel like I’m finally understanding all of Dickens stories. We’ve also been reading a page or two from the book above. I’m loving hearing Dinesh D’souza’s backstory.

-my drawing lessons from this book below, as well as the rest of my Wondrous Winter Mother’s Curriculum.

-the book Sarah by Orson Scott Card, which I finished this past week as an audiobook in Libby. It’s so interesting to hear the supposition of one man, a master storyteller, on how the life of Sarah played out with her husband Abraham.

5. I had a series of mini-miracles involving thrifting in December and early January which I detail over here.

6. I lost my Air Pods and then found them the next morning, just under the edge of my bed. I have lost and found them so many times, enough to put me into permanent cardiac arrest because of the cost of replacing them. I told my husband that I keep losing them, and he offered to let me use the trackable tag (Tile brand) that he has had sitting in his drawer that our daughter gave to him. I didn’t know he had one so this was very good news. May I never lose them again!

7. We prayed for rain and snow the first Sunday of February, Fast Sunday, and we’ve had three rainy days since then!

8. After waiting for almost two years, our family got into a homeschooling co-op that we’ve been waiting to get into for almost two years! We as as a family signed up for a different homeschool co-op after leaving the one we had been in for four years, in the spring of 2024. We signed up for this new one two years ago in March. The co-op takes December and January off (I’m all for that!) so we just started classes with them the first week of February. This will be a great way for my 16-year-old to finish up his last year and a half of high school. This new co-op has tons of choices for scholar classes, much more than the previous co-op, which was centered more for the children under 12, and a new set of friends to get to know. More friends for me too! I’m excited!

9. My 16-year-old, the youngest of my seven, just got his driver’s license! It has been a bittersweet time not to have to drive him to soooo many activities but also I miss our time in the car together listening to audiobooks. An era has ended!! Ever since the fall of 1997, for a Kindermusik class for my firstborn when he was 4, until this Winter of 2026 (almost 30 years!), I have been driving my seven children to various classes outside the home as part of of our family homeschooling. It has been a wonderful blessed time. Sometime I will have to blog about all the audiobooks and music we listened to in the car for those three decades!

10. My blue light blocking glasses that I bought last November, just simple ones in amazon for less than $20, are giving me better sleep! I remember to put them on sometime after sunset and wear them until I shut my eyes for sleep between 11 and midnight. Many nights I don’t wake up at all until 6-7 AM to go to the bathroom. If any of you 40+ moms are out there you know all about those middle in the night potty visits, and how much we wish they happened not in the middle of the night.

11. For Fast Sunday in January, we prayed and fasted that we would have some miracle regarding our minivan. It has been out of commission since August. So we’ve been down to one car. With three of us driving now sometimes it gets tricky to share one car. So we fasted and prayed that we’d either get the minivan fixed or replaced by some miracle. My husband has been working on it and taken it into the shop. The repair shop quoted a bill to fix it for over $6K to which we politely said no to because that’s more than it’s worth. We’re hoping my husband can fix it for much cheaper on his own. That same day that we fasted and prayed for a miracle, at church, a man in our congregation spoke to my husband, Brother G. He offered our family a car!!! A silver Dodge Caravan minivan. We got an answer the same day!!! He told my husband he had felt inspired in his Sunday morning prayer to offer our family a car. There’s a little story behind this car. Brother G wasn’t the original owner. Our congregation (ward) used money contributed by members to buy this car for a handicapped couple in our ward, who each use a wheelchair. The couple had used this car for a few years, and then sadly they both got sick and had to go into assisted living homes. So they couldn’t use the car any more. So this man in our ward, who actually lives across the street from us, has been the steward of the car ever since and he gave it to us. We hadn’t said a word about our need for a car to anyone. I know he was inspired by the Holy Ghost to give us this car. Only God could know how much we needed one. So now we have two working cars again, which is so useful, especially with our newly minted teen driver.

12. Daffodils are already springing up in my yard! It’s the winter of no winter when we have often hit 50 to 60 degrees in January and February. I’m still praying for rain in the valley and snow in the mountains.

Despite some trials, I’m feeling so grateful for all of these gifts. It’s amazing to stop and think of all these things and realize that God truly is in the details of my life.

If you would like to see the hand of God in your life, I encourage you to pray to God and ask for help in seeing His hand. Then spend time reading the Bible to see His hand in ancient times. Spend time reading the Book of Mormon Another Testament of Jesus Christ to see His hand in ancient America times. Spend time reading stories in my Celestial Family Devotionals Ebook as well to see His hand in modern people’s lives. I am confident that no matter how miserable your life may seem, if you spend time reading or listening to sacred texts and personalized godly stories, pondering, praying and writing, you will see His hand in your life.

Now just for fun, here’s a fun video of the De La Mott’s family Valentine’s Day celebration.

Happy post Valentine’s Day my friends!