DAD HACKS: Valentine's Day Reflections 2023

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00;00;00;13 - 00;00;18;24
Matthew Krekeler
Welcome to Girl Dad Nation. I'm Matthew Krekeler, your humble host. And I'm taking this episode solo to share with you some of my reflections for Valentine's Day this year.

00;00;22;29 - 00;00;45;27
Matthew Krekeler
All right, so happy Valentine's Day. Or if you're listening to this later than happy belated valentines or if you're listening to this much, much later than happy early Valentine's Day, I guess for the next Valentine's Day. So on this day, I wasn't necessarily going to do an episode specifically for Valentine's Day, but I was actually kind of inspired.

00;00;45;27 - 00;01;13;15
Matthew Krekeler
So I got home today and my wife was picking up my daughters and they had just ran to the store and this so sweet moment happened where they wanted to come in and they had a surprise for me and my daughter was so excited to give me this surprise. Well, while she was at the store, she picked out some flowers for me and that really surprised me.

00;01;13;15 - 00;01;34;24
Matthew Krekeler
But it was so, so sweet. She told her, Mom, Mommy, daddy would love these flowers. And my wife being so sweet as she is, of course, it's like anytime you get flowers, it's like it's super nice, but we're very frugal and it's always like, I don't know, we don't always need that extra money and all that kind of stuff.

00;01;34;24 - 00;01;59;07
Matthew Krekeler
So practically, it's not something that we do too often. But my wife saw her love and she saw just how happy it was going to make her to give this gift. And that's really what Valentine's Day is all about, is giving that gift of love to show someone you appreciate them. It's going that extra a little bit, even if it's not like always the best.

00;02;00;11 - 00;02;25;29
Matthew Krekeler
Like, doesn't always seem like it's the best use of time. Sometimes we have so many other things that maybe seem more important or money that could go elsewhere and all these different excuses that we put up for ourselves. But how beautiful is it that we take that extra time, make that sacrifice, whether time or money or treasure or talent, and do something just because you want to make somebody is day.

00;02;25;29 - 00;02;50;26
Matthew Krekeler
And that's what my daughter demonstrated, that she was so excited to pick these out. And of course, she picked out the rainbow kind that she just loved, which was so, so sweet. They have like all the red roses and all these things, but this beautiful bouquet of all these different colored roses that she just loved. And of course, I just loved and I loved receiving them.

00;02;50;26 - 00;03;16;16
Matthew Krekeler
I loved being able to share that with my daughters. So that's why I wanted to come on and just reflect a little bit about just how beautiful this day is that we get to set this time aside, to think about someone else. Even if we don't have a significant other necessarily, we might not have a spouse or a boyfriend girlfriend to be able to share this day with.

00;03;16;16 - 00;03;45;18
Matthew Krekeler
And I know that can kind of make this day feel very lonely for some people, and I understand that. But also it's a time to to appreciate our friends, appreciate our family. And if we have kids to to model that demonstration of love and sacrifice for them, to appreciate them and to model that so that they can grow up and always see that and always try to give that love to the people around them as well.

00;03;45;28 - 00;04;10;14
Matthew Krekeler
And something that like even when I go to the store with my daughters, you know, it's not all the time, but it's more than just once a year that I try to make an effort to bring home flowers for my wife and I love involving my girls and that they help me pick out just the perfect color flower that they know that their mom is going to love the secret of.

00;04;10;14 - 00;04;39;05
Matthew Krekeler
She loves all of them, but but they love being involved in that. And so more than just once a year, I've modeled that. And so when they went with my wife, they wanted to return that to me, which was so, so beautiful. So that was the first story. Second story. And I kind of have a gripe a little bit with this day because class party is I want to just get a little bit into class parties.

00;04;39;22 - 00;05;03;11
Matthew Krekeler
My daughter's in preschool and she's had all these different parties for different holidays, which is great and really fun. It puts a lot of stress on parents, though. There's so many other things to think about, you know, just getting them lunch every day, like packing every day for their normal school. It seems like a lot to me sometimes, especially now that we have three kids.

00;05;04;04 - 00;05;23;02
Matthew Krekeler
But party is it's like, oh, when the day comes up and you're like, Oh, we need to run to the store. We haven't even went to the store to grab like the Valentines that we need. And it's always like we're trying to do it last minute. But the other thing is stores don't really make it easy on you and all the manufacturers out there for Valentine's.

00;05;24;05 - 00;05;54;19
Matthew Krekeler
Hopefully you'll take some notes because my daughter has 12 kids in her class, but all of the little treats for Valentine's Day don't come in packs of 12. We were going to get little Debbie's and so my daughter picked out these like Little Debbie treats. They come in boxes of ten. So what do we do? We just, like, hope that two kids might be not feeling well, and hopefully only ten kids show up to their class.

00;05;55;06 - 00;06;16;17
Matthew Krekeler
And if you know anything about, like, what we've been through this past season, that's probably more likely than not that at least some kids are going to be sick. It just seems like there's always people sick, and it's usually my kids that are always sick every other week. So so that's that's a fair assumption to say that maybe there's going to be some kids sick.

00;06;17;00 - 00;06;40;11
Matthew Krekeler
But if everyone shows up, how terrible would it be to not be able to give every kid a gift like I know my my daughter would just be so sad if one of her friends did not get one of her Valentine's, so. Okay, so we need two boxes if you're doing the math, the two boxes of ten to at least cover the 12 kids in our class.

00;06;40;11 - 00;07;01;25
Matthew Krekeler
So my wife planned ahead. She got two boxes, but right before we were going to pack up the treats, we took them out of the box and we realized that they were twin wrapped, which means that each of the candies or each of the like, little hostess cakes. In this case, they were twin wrapped being two to a wrapper.

00;07;02;17 - 00;07;35;17
Matthew Krekeler
So then if you're doing the math, we're back down to ten individually and ten wrapped items with two things in them. So we had to go back to the store and grab one more box to be able to cover everything so that each kid got something that was wrapped. So, man, what a headache that was. But, but I know like my daughter was so excited to get those treats and one of her aunts was watching them for us for a little bit, and that was a great activity for them to do.

00;07;36;04 - 00;08;10;11
Matthew Krekeler
That took up some part of the day, got them involved, doing an activity away from screen time and being able to individually like make little valentines, putting little notes on each of the little cakes that she's going to bring into her class for Valentine's. So she's so excited about it. She's able to share that. But yeah, just wanted to share that little parenting frustration with you and I'm sure you've probably ran into some of those same frustrations before as parents, so I'd love to hear those comments.

00;08;10;11 - 00;08;33;15
Matthew Krekeler
What do you do for Valentine's Day? Do you send them with treats? Do you send them with cards? Do you make little Valentine's mailboxes with your kids? How do you celebrate this day? And what were some special items that you did? Some special gifts either for your kids or for your spouse or special person in your life. What were those things?

00;08;33;15 - 00;09;02;03
Matthew Krekeler
I'd love to hear them, put them in the chat, put them in the comments on Instagram or on Facebook. Would love to hear those things and tagged at Girl that Nation, and I'd love to share this. Okay. So lastly, wanted to share a really cool thing too that was in the news today. So my first guest, Loni Anderson, he is known as the king of Valentine's Day and for a very good reason.

00;09;02;10 - 00;09;30;24
Matthew Krekeler
So he has been creating these amazing, unique Valentine's for almost three decades. And this year he did it again. So he had a friend with this big field down in New Mexico. And he spent a lot of time I don't know the numbers exactly, but it looks like it would take a lot of time going in the field with this piece of wood and some rope.

00;09;31;12 - 00;09;56;26
Matthew Krekeler
And he was stomping the field with this piece of wood to create this giant heart shaped valentine with his wife's name. And in the middle of it. And there's a really sweet picture flying over with a drone to see this big, big heart in the middle of the field for his wife. And again, it goes back to like, wow, like, why would you do something like that?

00;09;56;26 - 00;10;26;22
Matthew Krekeler
Like, how many hours did you spend? Like and he says it himself. He's like, this is not even going to last forever. It's like him pressing down the tall grass in the field to create this image of this big heart when you can see it from the sky. But it's just that love that he shares and that he's encouraging other people to do every year when he creates these Valentines is to like have those people in your life that you will go out of your way for.

00;10;27;05 - 00;10;53;23
Matthew Krekeler
Sometimes people say you're crazy for, but doing those things to show that you love them. So I wanted to highlight that story and that picture of his valentine. I put on my Instagram and my Facebook, so go check that out. It's at Girl Dad Nation. Yeah, you could see his picture from that news story and in the description is a link to find that news article really, really, really cool story.

00;10;54;15 - 00;11;16;19
Matthew Krekeler
So yeah. So anyway, that's my reflection for today and I want to share that with you. So how can we spread love today on this special Valentine's Day.

00;11;16;24 - 00;11;39;23
Matthew Krekeler
Thank you so much for listening. I hope you've enjoyed these podcasts. If you do, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast, and if you haven't already done so, hit that follow button and come check me out on Instagram and Facebook. And I also have a YouTube channel where you can watch the interview with Lonnie Anderson.

00;11;40;01 - 00;11;55;14
Matthew Krekeler
He has these great big candies in the background that he made for one of his valentines where they fell out of a giant pinata. So go check that out. It's super cool and I hope to be posting more stuff soon. Thank you so much and spread the love.