silliness

Bubble beard is courtesy of Jacob's Salon Stylz, located in the upper bathroom.

valentines day wrap-up

This is the fruit bouquet I created for Mark & the boys for Valentines Day dinner. Not the greatest work of art, but certainly edible and enjoyable! I usually try to come up with something creative for Valentines Day, but mostly I think its a silly "holiday". I did surprise the kids a bit this year when I wrote "Happy Valentines Day" on their bathroom mirrors with lipstick. I have done this every year for Mark, but decided to see what would happen if I did it in the kids bathrooms. They definitely weren't expecting this first thing in the morning so the most popular response to this surprise was, "Is this gonna come off?", followed by, "How did you do that?"

This year I was in charge of Jacob's school class party. I usually offer to help with Valentines Day activities because this holiday tends to lend itself to girly activities and I want my boys (and all the boys) to have fun too and not come home complaining about "dumb parties". This was the first time I've ever been "in charge" though. So anyway, after talking to a couple of moms about ideas, I came up with a Valentine Olympic theme and decided to have the class break into teams and compete for medals (peach rings on gold, silver, or bronze string) I decided that games were more fun for everyone than crafts. The added element of competition usually sparks boys interest as well. One mom led the class in a relay using chopsticks to carry conversation hearts from one end of the room to the other, another mom led a winter clothing relay where they had to put on hats, scarf, and mittens, and then unwrap a candy kiss, and another mom helped them play some valentine pictionary. I asked one other mom to come up with a game. I suggested some team game ideas, but she didn't like them I guess, because she came up with her own -- which would have been fun if only like 5 kids were playing, but with 28 it was mass chaos as it didn't keep their attention and involvement. That was a very LONG 15 minutes. We had fun treats after the medal ceremony -- chocolate fondue with a variety of foods to dip, like pretzels, bananas, strawberries, marshmallows, pinapple, vanilla wafers, and graham crackers with pink lemonade to wash it all down. The kids had a lot of fun except for one poor kid throwing up, and another kid getting a bloody nose. Both incidents were completely random and had nothing to do with the partying. All in all it was a success! Wahoo!

In other valentine day happenings, Jared and his teachers quorum went on a tour of the Sweets Candy factory after school. Jared surprised me with bringing home a couple boxes of orange sticks -- one of my favorites, due to good memories of my grandparents.

dozen roses

Mark brought these beauties home for me yesterday!