Valentine's Day

 Happy Valentine's Day! 

I mean, really....that "E" shouldn't even be in there, phonetically speaking.

 We started out our day with some chocolate chip banana bread and heart-shaped baked french toast.  Unfortunately, after baking, the hearts were a little less heart-like and more puffy-oval-like, but that's ok.  Oh, and I had planned to serve the french toast with fresh strawberries....but, the kids ate ALL the strawberries last night for dinner with the babysitter.  I didn't think to tell her not to eat them.  Livin' and learnin' here.  The kids also opened some gifts from us.  After everyone was dressed and relatively clean for the day, we took some obligatory "here-we-go-again-we-have-to-humor-mom" pictures.

 

Little miss funny girl thought this was a game...."you give me the L and I throw it off the couch."

Shane didn't want to hold the E the other way, because it was then backwards to him.

Hard to slow her down.  Virtually impossible to slow her down AND get her to look AND get her to smile.

 Caleb & Meredith brought flowers, along with homemade cards, to their teachers.  As I was wrapping the stems with wet paper towels & foil, I was reminded of the several times, when I was a little kid, I would pick tulips from our yard to bring to my own teacher and my Mom would wrap them like this to keep them fresh.

Meredith was so excited about the cards we put together for her friends.

Her teachers did some Valentines activities with them today, though there was no formal party for parents to help with/go to.  The kids passed out their cards before school started.

 

 

Caleb was also pretty excited about his Valentines.  Our original plan was to put these eye patches on actual apples, but we decided to just go the simpler route.

I helped with Caleb's class party, and it was fun (as always!).  I absolutely love being in my kids' classrooms.  Just to get a little glimpse of the environment they are in for several hours each weekday is priceless.  I didn't get a ton of pictures from the party, because I was in charge of one of the stations, and it was messy.  Messy = no touching the camera!  

The activity I had planned ended up being a hit.  I made a huge batch of homemade play dough (I used the recipe found here, but made 1.5 times this amount, which was perfect for the 19 kids in C's class).  I divided the big batch into individual portions, one for each kiddo.  I brought in some red food dye and strawberry extract, and the kids mixed both of those things in to make some Valentine's-y play dough....pinkish-red in color and smellin' like strawberries.  After they finished coloring/scenting their dough, they could play with it; I brought in several various sized heart cookie cutters for them to use.  I really wanted to try something different for this party, but I didn't know if these 6 & 7 year olds would be "too cool" for play dough.  But they loved it!  They all did really great with mixing in the coloring, which takes quite a bit of kneading and squishing.  They thought it was fun and they obviously got to take their play dough home, which was an added bonus.  

After the kids were done with their stations, they all played a group game.  So, my hands were a bit more free to take pics.