Valentine's day 2014

I promised that this year I wouldn't procrastinate as much as I did last year and be up until past midnight putting together all of Ellie's valentines.  Once again, her school was not very good at updating us on the plans for any sort of Valentine's day activities, so I took matters into my own hands.  There was a bag of old, broken crayons that my nurse practitioner had given me months ago.  I had been promising Ellie that we would peel them and melt them down forever.  I got the brilliant (*sarcasm*) idea that we would melt them down into hearts for her to give out for Valentines.  (I really can't wait for the year that I post I just went to Target and bought the commercial ones. )  I also bought some basic, make yourself, foam Valentines, which to Ellie's credit, she put together all by herself and signed "love Ellie" on the back of them.  Phew, one thing done.  I also told her we would make heart shaped cupcakes for her to bring into school and bought little bags for her to put the goodies in.

I had asked Cheyenne to get a list of names of the kids from her class.  She took a photo of the sign in sheet which seemed reasonable.  After many, many hours of trying to peel crayons, my cramped fingers with crayon shavings shoved into my fingernails were killing me.  I hoped I had enough to make the 19 crayons that I needed for her class.  Fortunately there was a snow day the day before so I had a little extra time to make all of the darn cupcakes, frosting and decorate them with Ellie since there was no way I was getting to do any work.  We also made the crayons and she packed them and the Valentines into the little bags and bam! I was done before she went to bed.  Except she kept talking about the girl named Gabby who takes the bus to school.  I thought I would investigate what her name was since she has been begging me for a play date.  Hmmmm, Gabby's name isn't on the sign in sheet.  Text Ellie's teacher--Gabby doesn't sign in because she takes the bus.  Oh, well then how many kids are in her class again?  Not 19 but 23?  Oh, ok, perfect.  I have 22 Valentines and 21 crayons.  Damnit!  So now I am trying to explain to Ellie that she might not get a Valentine bag that she made and isn't it better that her friends be happy and blah, blah, blah when the poor girl had worked so hard on everything that she just wanted one too.  So I went to peeling more crayons to squeak one more heart shaped crayon out and prayed that one kid wouldn't show up for school the next day because of the snow.  And lucky for me, a few didn't.  Maybe next year it will be Target.

Zack's class was totally ignored, as was my husband.  He ran out to CVS the night before at about 8 pm to get money out of the ATM and it was all I could to not to shout after him "pick yourself up a Valentine's day card while you're at it!"  Fortunately we aren't big celebrators.  I haven't figured out why I go so crazy about it for Ellie yet.

The Valentines, crayons and bags

The crayons actually came out really neat.  If it wasn't for peeling all the crayons I would do it again.

The cupcakes.  Ellie helped decorate them.  They were shallow and sort of looked like muffin tops.