Our Valentine's Day Celebrations

You might be getting old when...

You go out to dinner the day before Valentine's Day to avoid the crowds.  And you leave the house at 5 pm.

Actually, it was a nice dinner out, at one of our favorite Chinese restaurants.  We had fun.

Usually, we graph conversation hearts every year for Valentine math.  This year, I decided to change things up a bit.

We had a heart candy comparison, instead.  I passed out four different kinds of heart candies, and they tasted them and wrote descriptions.  Then they ranked them from favorite to least favorite.

Then the trading began, because different kids had different favorites.

This kept them occupied for quite a while.

Next, I passed out new books!  Katie got Hello Kitty and Bernstein Bears, Hannah got Katie Woo and Nancy Drew, and Jack got Arthur and Nate The Great.

My kids love getting new books, and I love seeing them excited about reading!

Katie's reading is really coming along.  She's doing well sounding out a lot of words now.

We haven't read the Katie Woo books before, but there's a bunch of them, so I thought I'd see what Hannah thought, and maybe pick up some more of them.

Katie also got to read our Valentine-appropriate Biscuit books during nap time this week.  Biscuit and Boynton books were favorites when Jack was a toddler, so these always make me nostalgic.

Unfortunately, I had a little mishap that landed me in the dentist's chair unexpectedly for an hour and a half on Valentine's Day.  That was Not Fun.  I was glad that Paul and I had gone out to dinner the night before.

Grammy sent the family s'mores kits!  Isn't this the cutest idea?

We didn't use them on Valentine's Day, because we had birthday cake that day, but when we did use them, it was fun.

Lighting things on fire is always fun.

Love the deadpan expression.

Everybody got to roast their own marshmallows.

Katie did great, and really loved the resulting s'mores.

As did everyone, really.

Fire, mess, chocolate, what more could a kid ask for?

I picked this up at Cost Plus last time Eli and I ran to Trader Joe's, but you can also get shaped pasta online, including these hearts.

The "pink" hearts turned orange when they were cooked, but that's okay.  I added alfredo sauce and leftover peas, and the girls loved it.  I think we might need shamrock pasta for St. Patrick's Day.


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