Will You Be My Valentine?

We celebrated love for a good month at our house.  Callie really gets into the holiday spirit for every holiday, but this Valentine's Day seemed to have an even higher level of anticipation and excitement associated with it.  She started tracing heart-shaped cookie cutters on construction paper and taping them all over the house.  Then she eventually started drawing her own heart shapes to cut out.  These were by far my favorite.  Especially when the hand-written messages started appearing on them, too.  This learning-to-write phase is one of my all-time favorites, I must say.  She made Valentines for everyone in our house (including her beloved Min), all her cousins and grandparents, and all the kids at Music Makers for our Valentine exchange.  We had parties with friends and parties with family.  We had heart-shaped food and sprinkles and pink frosting.  We wore lots of pink and purple and red and colored pictures printed out at the library with those same "valentine's colors".  And Dad even got in on the fun, making the most adorable custom hand-made construction paper valentines for the kids I've ever seen.  (Made my heart burst to find him crafting at the coffee table when I came home from visiting teaching late one evening.)  Basically we lived up the Valentining this month and I must say it was pretty delightful.

I {heart} U MiN BY CAL

Crafting for cousins.

HAPPE VALENTINS DA MOM AND SAM
I {heart} U YES I DO
DUN BY CAL
(be still my heart!!!)

She loved this design I found on a free crayola
printable site and worked very hard on it for a few
days.

Some lovey dovey library love.

I made a pie.

We (completely unintentionally, pinkie swear) matched for church
so I made us all pose for a picture to document the valentiney cuteness.

:) :) :)

Prepping friend Valentines for Music Makers - we chose
heart shaped yogurt covered pretzels (with sprinkles!) and
classic conversation hearts from the bulk bins at Winco and
added construction paper hearts "To U {heart} Cal and Sam".

Valentine's Day finally arrived!!  Heart shaped
sprinkle pancakes, strawberries, and heart shaped
bacon for breakfast.

More sprinkles for dessert!

Knock-off Swig sugar cookies (plus sprinkles).
I've never had the real deal, but I must say
these were delish!

Cal's Valentine from Dad - each heart had some-
thing he loves about or loves to do with her.
It was seriously adorable.

Sam was thrilled with his truck Valentine
from Dad.

So there are going to be a lot of these, but they
crack me up, so I'm posting them all.  Hang on.

I mean, can you even handle that smile?

They got these glasses from some friends at
Music Makers - they wore them nonstop for days
afterward and I feel like I'm seeing the future
when they'll be big kids wearing real glasses
perhaps.

Callie really wanted a Valentine party where she invited Evy and Grandma and had decorations and games.  We decided to make a day out of it on Saturday the 17th and hold it in Providence.  We called it a Chinese Aggie Valentine's Party.  The Valentine's part was taken care of by Cal: she made decorations and props for the games ("red heart/green heart", "heart heart Valentine", and "hide the heart").  The Chinese part, for Chinese New Year on the 16th, was a delicious lunch of funky noodles, egg rolls, steamed dumplings, and fortune cookies.  Gung Hai Fat Choi!  The Aggie part was at the Spectrum, a rare afternoon men's basketball game, where we watched the Ags battle it out against ranked Nevada.  They didn't win (it was actually Gregg's first time seeing the Aggies lose at home), but they at least made a game of it.  And Sam learned to "whoosh" when the guys swished a free throw.  So I call that a win.

Cute cousins playing restaurant with Grandma.

We made a LOT of funky noodles.

Wearing our Aggie Blue.

Aggie Family.