Happy Hearts

Lily calls all heart shaped figures “happy hearts.” She was super excited to see all of the Valentine’s Day decorations out. It also meant, Valentine’s Day cards, which is a huge production when one child goes to two schools, and this year we’d have Lily in the party mix too. Add in that Valentine’s Day is like winter Halloween. Apparently, character themed cards featuring a Transformer shooting hearts out of his eyes/windshield isn’t sufficient. Now you need to attach something containing sugar.

I’d planned ahead and purchased cards on clearance after Valentine’s Day, so we were set with a choice of holographic butterflies, Batman or Cabbage Patch Kids.

For the Montessori school, we like to hand-make our Valentine’s. Now times two children. I really should have started in August. Imagine my delight when we found out that the new Montessori school draws names. Both girls came home with an envelope on a string around their necks with their drawn names enclosed. It was very exciting, like the Academy Awards of Valentine’s cards. Each girl had to make five cards (plus two teachers). They have the attention span to make four, so this would be doable.

Thanks to Pinterest, we busied ourselves making flowers with coffee filters. Of course, we needed 10 filters, we now own 100 filters. Washable markers and squirt bottles. We used the tub as our drop cloth. Easy peasy. Then we had to assemble them. The girls did surprisingly well with cutting stems and gluing everything down, then signing their creations.

 

We weren’t done at creating Valentine’s for the classes, we also had to make one for Daddy. I had an idea to take one of the stones that had been piled up in front of our house for nearly two months so the girls could paint it and add their handprints. Of course, the day Lily and I drove into the development on our covert rock recovery mission was the day the stones were being applied to our actual house. Go figure? With our cover blown, Lily and I coasted by, not making contact with the guys slapping our Valentine’s onto the house. We circled the block formulating a new plan. Then I happened to see a perfectly sized stone by the road, not on anyone’s lot. I pulled over, kicked it over to make sure there weren’t any tarantulas under it, then freaked out that there were spiders in the crevices so I put it in a bag. We looked highly suspicious. We high-tailed it home. Once Ella was home, we did the only natural thing one does with a rock and preschoolers, we gave it a bath. Once our rock was bathed, dried and primped, we set about painting it in some nice glittery permanent colors. I was initially interested in the rock, I thought it was not only neat that it was from our new neighborhood, but it had shells fossilized in it! The girls completely painted over any archeological artifacts. There could have been a baby triceratops encased in there, and now it may as well have been a piece of asphalt covered in glitter paint.

Valentine’s Day morning, Loran and I had a hot date with the Special Ed team at Ella’s school. I realized as soon as I walked into that board room full of teachers decked out in pink, red and hearts that I had dressed like a bitter, single woman, decked out in black. I’d totally dressed for the weather, not the day. I changed into a bright pink sweater and added some bling upon returning home. I sent the girls to school with surprise sandwiches, which as evidenced by Lily’s face, were a big hit. After our meeting, Loran took me out for a romantic breakfast at Chick-fil-a, but upon opening my spicy chicken biscuit, I was surprised by a heart shaped biscuit! Aww!

It killed the girls that I made them wait until after Loran and I had our dinner before they could open their Valentine gifts. Cards and packages from afar and gifts from Mommy and Daddy. Then we had Loran close his eyes so he could receive his big gift. His rock is rather dense. It kind of felt like Charlie Brown’s Halloween candy stash… “I got a rock.”

It may *just* be a rock for some. But for us it has a lot of meaning. It’s a chunk of land from where our new roots will be put down in Austin. It shines beautifully in the sun thanks to all of the glitter and it holds our girls’ handprints capturing their size when they moved to Austin. I also added the words “Austin 2013” just in case we have to delineate it from the other large, heavy, glittery rocks we have hanging around.