Our Valentine Elf

Shortly after the holidays, Zach started asking when we could make valentines. "Valentine's Day is when you show people you love them, so I am going to make valentines for everyone I know so they know I love them." Yikes... that would be a lot of valentines!

I convinced him to wait until a couple weeks before the big day, and then we got to work. Our first stop was the fabric store - with me struggling to explain exactly what fabric was and why we were going there. But once we arrived, he got into the spirit. I showed him where all the valentines-themed fabric was and told him he could pick out three. The red M&Ms print was a no-brainer, but it took him a while to decide on the other two. So many choices!

I can't wait until Zach is more adept with a scissors, because I am not. But I got the cutting done, and then we got out the paint and glue and got down to the fun part. I enjoyed listening as Zach debated who should get what color heart, which fabric, what color to paint their initial. He'd say things like "well, Maryn really likes green, so she should get the green heart fabric." So cute; he really got into the spirit!

I wasn't about to cut out enough hearts for the 17 kids in his preschool class, so Zach got to pick out valentines from the store. Guess what he went with? Go ahead, you'll be right. I believe they were the exact same Cars valentines he chose last year, although this year they came with a pencil... ooooh.

After we finished the homemade valentines, I was pretty surprised Zach wanted to keep going. So I had him start signing his name on the school ones, then thought why not have him address them too? I kept telling him he could take a break, he didn't have to write them all at one time. But nope; he sat there, with his tongue sticking out, concentrating on forming all those letters. And he did it - all 17 names. We were ready a full week before his school V-day party!

We also baked and decorated some heart-shaped cookies - heavy on the sprinkles when Zach is involved. And on Monday we baked up some cupcakes decorated with pink and red M&Ms to take to 3M to surprise Scott. I didn't tell Zach the plan until Scott had left for work, so we actually managed to surprise him!

Whew, that was quite the holiday. Now Zach is already looking forward to next month and talking about Scott's surprise birthday party. Uhh... what?? I guess it's going to be a surprise for me too.