The Blanch Herd: I Choo Choose You For My Valentine

It's the season of love! Callie and Sam have been making secret valentines and stashing them in giant boxes lined up along the wall in the living room and labeled with everyone's names since mid-January, so the actual holiday was a long time coming at our house. But the week of Valentine's Day we finally got around to making our valentines for our music makers and school parties. Sam chose a train theme (surprise, surprise!) so we traced our train cookie cutter on construction paper, wrote a little ditty (I choo choose you for my Valentine), signed each one (Sam took care of that part himself) and taped a pink reese's heart on each (Sam handled that job himself, too).

Callie opted to make her class Valentine's too (actually, even when I asked if she wanted to buy some she said, "No! I want to make them!" And I had to talk her down from writing personalized poems on each since there would be 28 to make for her class. Since she was hand-making, Sam wanted to hand-make, so that's what we did. The simplest way I know how: cookie cutters, markers, construction paper and tape. Done.) Callie made hearts with the saying "I {heart} that we're friends" on it for the girls and for the boys she cut out airplanes with the saying "Have a high-flying Valentine's Day". I helped her a bit with tracing (holding the cookie cutter steady while she drew around it with a pencil) and cutting (she did the hearts and I did the airplanes) but she did everything else by herself! She's so crafty and creative and thoughtful!

Cal's class party was on Thursday since there was no school on Valentine's day. I got to go help out in her classroom, where all the first grade classes rotated through to make frosted (and sprinkled - oh my how they sprinkled!) rice crispy treats. She played games in Mrs. Thurston's classroom and did crafts in Mrs. Coy's classroom and was plenty hopped up on sugar by the time the whole thing was done!

Sprinkle station.

Things got quite out of hand with some of these sprinklers!

Cal's BFF Abby's mom (a former 2nd grade teacher
at this school) knew just how to fill the extra time
after the treats were finished by reading a couple
stories to the kids - she is fantastic!

That evening we had a lovely pre-Valentine's day pink sky
sunset!

Gregg took off the day on Friday so we could all hang out together while Cal was out of school. Our original plan was to go hang out with the Olsens in Heber, but poor Grace got the flu (again! second time this season, once each with Influenza A and B! what are the odds?!), so we had to postpone our visit (again! since the last time we were going to go was the first time she (and Heather) were sick). So we made new plans that turned out to be pretty fun. We started off by opening up our boxes of valentines that the kids (and Gregg) had contributed all month. Callie went through all her class valentines, too, and sorted and shared and spread them all over the room.

I was really feeling the need for cinnamon rolls since I didn't make any for Christmas, so I decided a no school/no work Valentine's Day was an excellent occasion to whip up a batch. (They looked great, but were overbaked and were on the dry side - I am so struggling with cinnamon rolls lately! Guess I need more practice?)

Then we were off on our "luckiest day ever!" (Sam's words) adventure. We decided to cash in on the kids' chosen prizes for their 31-day read aloud challenge from January (we're a bit slow). Cal chose swimming and Sam chose a visit to "Boomdocks" arcade. We squeezed in a lunch stop at Crown Burgers, too, just for fun. And we even hit up a couple of snow-free parks while we were on the other side of the mountains. It was a party of a play day and we had a blast together. We finished it off with (trying to be) heart-shaped pizza and a movie (what did we even watch? I can't remember. There was no new cabin building youtube episodes, so I think it might have been ski racing?). And after the kids were in bed, Gregg and I had a romantic date night on the couch watching Ford v Ferrari fresh from the redbox. (It was actually a really great movie that we both enjoyed!)