Sometimes I forget to tell my husband how excellent he is.
Well, actually, I tell him quite a lot, but to draw a comparison from the last bits of year 10 work I marked before I started writing this, if you don't put the detail in, you don't get the marks. So:
I love you. Thank you for being the one that looks after us, that makes me tea in the morning and is the best husband and the best father to our children than I could hope for. It's so easy to snipe when you're tired, when the kids always need something and don't always know how to ask for it nicely, when dinner always needs cooking, laundry dealing with and the house refuses to stay tidy despite everyone's best intentions. Yes, it always really bugs me that somehow the tabs on the nappies never get folded back, but you roll around on the floor with the kids and take them out in the garden to dig and run around when I'm too tired to and I know which one I'd rather have you do.
This year is the 11th consecutive Valentines day I've been in a relationship for. Prior to that I don't think I'd ever made it two - well definitely not with the same person, but you came into my life and changed everything. I'm still not quite sure how it happened, but we had 5 or so years of running around together as just us and now we're coming to 5 with small people and are about to become a family of 5. I'm more than a little daunted, but if the children so far are anything to go by, I reckon we'll be fine. Yes, we will grump at each other because it is all frankly bloody exhausting when you're looking after little people and working, but as long as we keep making each other cups of tea I expect we'll get through it!
You make me laugh; you look after me; you look after our house by working really hard so we can afford it all, and by actually looking after it - I would never remember to check if the soffits need painting or be able to put a fence back up after a storm and a fox knocked it down. Thank you for making sure I have the right amount of air in my tyres and putting up picture frames when I ask you to. Thank you for being the sort of husband that doesn't need me to ask him to do most of the things that he does. Oh, and you're also pretty handsome and going out with you to places makes me proud to call you mine.
I made some biscuits with the salient points iced on. (note on icing, freezing royal icing didn't quite work as well as I had expected)
Ed bought me some scaffolding. These are going to be make some exceptionally strong bookshelves for the study/crafting room. You never know, there might even be enough shelves to move all the books from the existing shelves and finally paint over the mustardy yellow that is the last remaining decorative choice from the previous owners.
I think the biscuits vs scaff boards probably sums up our respective strengths in this relationship. We make a pretty good team.
I love you.