#iPPP: Valentine's Day...A Year Later

Holy camole macarole!!!  Looking back, my last #iPPP post was last year, this same week!  I knew it had been quite awhile, but geez!  Um...well, then...hello again. :>

This year, we found some really cute li'l heart printables with the perfect Valentine's sayings for the themed pencils we slid through the cut out hearts on Pinterest, of course.  You can find them on Or So She Says where Sharon, from Lemon Squeezy shared them.  Loved that they were a fun non-candy option!

But, since I've annoyed myself and forgotten to snap a pic, let's move onto what I did remember to document from Valentine's Day.  And that is what has quickly become a favorite tradition:

hubs brings living flowers for me

and for his sweet li'l girl too.

When we keep them alive long enough, they can be planted in the backyard next month.  Sometimes that happens, sometimes it doesn't.  I hear there's this little thing plants like called water???  So far, they're looking good and my girl's old enough now to help remind me of that tiny life sustaining necessity. Fingers crossed!

Finally coming back for an #iPPP visit with

G*Funk*ified & Jumping With My Fingers Crossed & Angela Amman

From Left to Write: Hope's Dream

Young, elementary school kidlets stepping up to the podium, taking the microphone in hand, sharing their dreams for their classes' I Have a Dream presentation carved a niche in me.  They spoke from their hearts and touched mine.

Thinking on my response to reading Prayers for the Stolen by Jennifer Clement with From Left to Write this month, those speeches bubbled up.  This is a bit different than my typical post, but where both the book and those children's words took me.

Hope’s Dream

Martin Luther King, Jr. -
Ideas cut through the air, rolling across hundreds of thousands.
Orated ideals, shuttled forward through decades to come;
Words chauffeured through time, but not all lands.

“I have a dream…”
Children speak their own whispered hearts.
Trees for forests, healed and healthy parents, worlds without war -
They have a dream.
Breathing environments, cornflower blue skies, crystal streams channeling dirt-
They have a dream.
Kids free of fear, shining seas, feathered and furry friends left to roam free -
They have a dream.

Dozens of children hope for the wider world around them.
One child hopes for a world he came from, a world he knew.
A future holding more,
A future lacking less,
A future without dirt floors,
A future without empty bellies,
A future with hope.
He has a dream.

This post was inspired by the novel Prayers for the Stolen by Jennifer Clement.  Ladydi grew up in rural Mexico, where being a girl is a dangerous thing.  She and other girls were "made ugly" to protect them from drug traffickers and criminal groups.  Join From Left to Write on February 18 as we discuss Prayers for the Stolen.  As a member, I received a copy of the book for review purposes.  Opinions and response are my own.