The celebration of Valentine’s Day was a blur in our house. The snow totally threw my plans of baking and crafting out of wack. Thank God we started working on for Nate’s class valentines a few weeks before their party on the 12th, because I somehow became a useless blob with the blizzard and got hardly anything done.
Check out that look...concentration or ticked off?
In January, I showed Nate the lollipop butterfly valentines I mentioned in a post that month and we decided to make them for his friends. I knew we would need some time to make them so we took one or two nights a week and worked on it together…cutting out the butterflies, sticking on the foam hearts and sliding the lollipops in the middle.
The finished project!
Nate probably cut out three of them. He mostly stuck to the sticker-application and lollipop-insertion part. And I know, I know…I should have gotten him to help write names on them. But I remembered Thursday night that we had not written their names yet, so it was done in a rush. Next year, there’s always next year. He had enough cards for his classmates with tons extra that I told him to give to anyone else at the center that he loved. Needless to say, there were none left.
I couldn’t be there for his class party, but his teacher took several pictures for me.
The girls working away on their Valentine card boxes....
....and the boys hard at work on theirs.
THAT was why he didn't eat dinner Friday night. JEEZ!!
One of the class projects on the wall outside their class.
A very appropriate use for the DG, no? LOVE MS. JANNIS!
My heartbreaker.
Nate and I left early Saturday for a weekend trip Missouri to visit my brother and his family, leaving A to install hardwood floors over the weekend. It was sad not to spend the weekend together as a family, but the boys were so happy to see each other that it was worth it.
Valentine’s Day morning, the boys had surprises on their plates at breakfast.
Nate's Valentine breakfast plate.
My brother made the boys heart shaped pancakes for breakfast, and my SIL whipped up these little fruit kabobs-
Banana, apple and raisin kabobs
She took an apple and sliced it longways, then used a heart shaped cookie cutter and cut out the hearts and skewered it with a slice of banana and a raisin. They were so stinkin’ cute! You guys think I’m crafty…she takes the cake!
We left that Monday morning after some sledding-
"AAAHHHHH!!!"
Joy!
Aaron and I decided we’d celebrate Valentine’s Day as a family over dinner that night. We did not get him much for Valentine’s (a consious effort to not emphasis the gifts, but the LOVE) and I wanted to make the evening more fun. I turned to the post I did about the Valentine’s Day scavenger hunt and, while I was in MO, I made some hearts from construction paper and markers with clues guiding him to spots through the house. I hid them as soon as we got home, which took me a while….I kept getting them out of order and would have the last clue as the third. After 5 tries I finally got it right.
After dinner, we sat on the floor and opened cards from our family and each other. Nate had made Aaron a foam heart craft at the Wonder Placea few weekends prior, and A and I exchanged cards. He got me a cala lily plant and Nate gave me flower seeds to plant in the garden at the new house. Then we surprised Nate with the first clue for the hunt. It took him a sec to figure out what was going on, but he got it soon enough.
He was SO EXCITED!
I'd read him the clues....
...and he'd take off running for the next clue.
There were 5 or 6 different clues hidden all over the house.
The last clue took him to his box of Star Wars toys.
His haul...I made his heart at Wonder Place, too.
The scavenger hunt was a HUGE success, definately earning a spot in the yearly holiday rotation. It would be great for Easter and Christmas, too. I also found some Valentine’s Day kitchen towels that I plan to turn into a “Why I Love You” pillow for Nate, and maybe one for A too.
